Dr. Ruard Absaroka
Postdoc in Musicology
University of Salzburg, Unipark Nonntal
Erzabt-Klotz-Straße 1, Room 2.116, 5020 Salzburg
Tel.: +43 662 8044 4653
Fax.: +43 662 8044 4660
E-Mail:
Office Hours
By appointment only.
Research Interests
- Music and Performance Traditions of East Asia
- Urban (Ethno)musicology & Sonic Geography
- Music and Migration in Cities
- Creative Industries in East Asia
- Club Cultures & Global Histories of Nightlife (esp. Jazz and Hip-hop)
- Sound Studies & Computational Analysis of Timbre
- Critical Realism
- Musical Agnotology & De-centering Music Studies
- Musical “Rights to the City”
- Ethnographic Film-making
- Fieldwork Methods
Biography
Ruard Absaroka is a Post-Doc in the Department of Musicology and Dance Studies at Paris Lodron University, Salzburg, Austria. Born in England, he spent lengthy periods of his childhood and schooling in the Middle East, particularly in Turkey. A first degree, at Oxford University, was followed by Masters (Distinction, and awarded SOAS Masters Prize) and then Doctoral Studies at the University of London (SOAS: School of Oriental and African Studies). His AHRC-funded doctoral thesis (long-listed for the ICAS Dissertation Prize, IBP 2017), is on urban musical geographies and ‘Rights to the City’ in Shanghai, China. In the course of doctoral studies, he studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and also worked in parallel on the Leverhulme/AHRC-funded ‘Sounding Islam in China’ project. He was Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS for several years, and has also convened and taught courses at other University of London colleges (e.g. Royal Holloway). As an active musician, he is a classically trained piano and violin player, recorded and toured with an Oxford college choir, but also co-organised long-standing club nights as a founding member of a London jazz/hip-hop collective, and has led a Chinese Music Ensemble and co-founded the London Xiqu Chinese Opera Network. In his spare time, he is also known to have performed Korean Samulnori percussion at such venues as the O2 Stadium in London and is rumoured to have toured extensively with a revolutionary guerrilla Ceilidh ensemble. He currently serves on the committee for the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) and the Austrian national committee for ICTM, and is an active participant member of other professional bodies including CHIME (Chinese Music Research in Europe), SEM (Society for Ethnomusicology) and ICTM (International Council for Traditional Music).
Memberships
- Forum Asia Pacific (FOR APAC) of the University of Salzburg, Board Member.
- Erasmus- und Internationalisierungs-Koordinatior (Abteilung Musik- und Tanzwissenschaft).
- Mitglied des aktuellen Forschungsprojekts Musik und Migration. Das Projekt setzt sich zum Ziel, Konzepte wie Mobilität, Exil, Identität und Integration, in der musikalischen Migrationsforschung zu diskutieren und für die Themengebiete verschiedener Zeitperioden und Regionen zu erschließen.
- Mitorganisator der Konferenz Song, Stage and Screen XV: Mobilities – Stage and Film Musical in Motion.
- Treasurer and Committee Member, British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE).
- Vorstandsmitglied, Österreichisches Nationalkomitee im ICTM.
