Dr Hettie Malcomson
Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Social Anthropology; Doctoral Programme Director (Music department)
Dr Hettie Malcomson is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Social Anthropology at the University of Southampton.
I am interested in what the ethnographic study of music tells us about social concerns. My last project examined what Mexican danzón tells us about race, age, gender, status and ambivalence. I am developing a project in Mexico, funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, in which rap music tells us how disenfranchised youth experience, promote and critique the intense violence and criminality they are subject to. These projects have highlighted that we need to know more about how musicians and researchers are engaging with risk. Together with José Juan Olvera Gudiño (CIESAS Unidad Noreste, Mexico), I worked on a project, funded by a British Academy Newton Mobility Award, that brought together scholars in the UK and Mexico to gain a more holistic understanding of the impact of Mexico’s omnipresent violence on musicians’ lives, livelihoods and music-making. And with DAEA Centro de Investigación e Intervención Psicosocial A.C., I worked on a HEFCE Newton ODA funded project to explore new practical and ethical strategies of self-care and self-protection for academic researchers and activists working in violent contexts.
My writings have appeared in Ethnomusicology, Popular Music and twentieth-century music, as well as in edited collections. And my article ‘Aficionados, Academics, and Danzón Expertise’ received the honourable mention for the Society of Ethnomusicology’s Bruno Nettl Prize (2015) which recognizes outstanding contributions to the history of the field of ethnomusicology.
Before coming to Southampton in 2012, I taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in music, sociology and Latin American Studies at the universities of Cambridge, Manchester, and Royal Holloway, London, and I continue to give occasional lectures at universities in Mexico and the USA. At Southampton, I re-established teaching provision in ethnomusicology, with introductory ethnomusicology courses and more advanced offerings, including Global Hip Hop (MUSI2127/3132) and Music and Ethnography (MUSI2126/3131). These courses attract students from across the University, and aim to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion and opportunities to think critically together.
I am currently Music’s Head of Research. I am also the ethnomusicology representative for the Institute of Musical Research Steering Committee; a member of the programme committee of the Latin American Music Seminar (Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London); and served as a committee member of British Forum for Ethnomusicology from 2013-2016 (including chairing the first British Forum for Ethnomusicology Book Prize in 2014).
My background is in social anthropology (BA, London School of Economics), ethnomusicology (MMus, Royal Holloway), and sociology (PhD, Cambridge), and I have also worked in the music industry and as a composer for film, TV and theatre. I have been a shortlisted composer of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, and participated in the Sixth Composers and Choreographers Exchange (South Bank Centre, London). My compositions for film and television have been broadcast internationally (including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA), and my works for concert hall have been performed at the Bath Festival, the Spitalfields Festival and on BBC Radio 3.