Bio

A settler of South Asian descent, I was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on Treaty 6 territory. I also sang in choirs and everywhere else. These contexts directly shape my work, however invisibly.

In general, I am interested in listening, voice, practice-based ways of knowing, ecological crisis, human-nonhuman relations, and settler colonialism. Music studies, critical Indigenous studies, and feminist science studies all help me explore these topics in my research and teaching.

Over the past ten years, I have been shaping the ideas in my book-in-progress, Unsettling Publics: Listening Beyond Sound on Indigenous Lands. A book about relational listening, settler publics, and ethnographic practice, it is supported by multi-sited fieldwork in Alberta and California with Indigenous leaders and settlers, both white and of color.

My research has been supported by a Robert Walser and Susan McClary Fellowship from the Society for American Music, a Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship from the American Musicological Society, and the Ida Halpern Fellowship from Society for Ethnomusicology, among others. My article, “Ugly Publics,” was awarded the 2024 Jaap Kunst Prize for “the most significant article in ethnomusicology written by members of the Society for Ethnomusicology during the first ten years of their scholarly career.”

In 2012, I co-founded the Bicycle Opera Project, a small opera company that takes contemporary Canadian opera to Canadians by bicycle.

I am parent to a small and miraculous being, partner to a fellow ethnomusicologist, and regular visitor to Lakes Monona and Mendota.

Selected Publications

2023. “Ugly Publics.” Ethnomusicology: Vol. 67: no. 3, 406–429.

2023. “On Eating, Critical Distance, and Qallunaat Cosmology.” American Quarterly: Vol. 75: no. 2, 229–250.

2023. “‘Where Are You From?’ Asian Americans on Indigenous Lands.” In “Marking Forty Years of American Music,” special edition, American Music: Vol 40: no. 4.

With Yun Emily Wang. 2022. “Meeting the Table Halfway.” In “Agency and Activism,” special issue, MUSICultures: Vol. 49, 257¬–267

Degrees

PhD in Ethnomusicology, University of Chicago, 2019

Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Voice Performance, University of Manitoba, 2010

B.A. Hons. in English Literature, University of British Columbia, 2009

B.Mus. in Music Scholarship, University of British Columbia, 2009