insideWOM editors

Rasika Ajotikar received her PhD from the School of African and Orienal Studies London, UK. She is currently a research assistant in the Musicology department at Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany. Since 2017, she has been working on the Felix van Lamsweerde archive of Indian music through critical engagement with critical race theory, studies on caste, gender, sexuality and postcolonial theories. Rasika’s doctoral research in the music department at SOAS focused on anti-caste cultural movements in contemporary western India as it broadly examined the history of musicianship through the lens of caste, gender and sexuality. Her ethnographic work has involved working and collaborating extensively with activists and musicians from an anti-caste movement in the western Indian state of Maharashtra which has led to a number of translation and performance projects.

Juan D. Montoya Alzate is a Colombian journalist and scholar bridging Tropical Colombian music with the fields of performance and heritage. He specializes in Colombian music styles including champeta, cumbia and ‘bailes cantaos.’ In 2015, he was appointed by the government of Medellin as the lead researcher for creating a candidacy to the Unesco’s Creative Cities Network. As an intern at Faro (Flemish interface centre for cultural heritage in Brussels), he conducted focused research and numerous interviews with carillon players and stakeholders who were pursuing the inscription of the carillon culture in Unesco’s list of Best Safeguarding Practices, which they finally achieved in 2014. He holds a MA degree in Cultural Studies (KU Leuven) and is part of the PhD staff of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam. He has been a regular collaborator of mediaoutlets such as The New Herald (USA), Deutsche Welle (Germany), O Globo (Brasil), El Tiempo and El Espectador (Colombia).

Charissa Granger received her PhD from Georg-August-University Göttingen in 2017. Currently she is a Marie Curie Leading Fellow postdoctoral researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. Charissa’s research foci are on how Caribbean and Afro-diaspora music-making practices generate knowledge, concentrating on music’s relationship to postcolonial and decolonial experiences. Affiliation: Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Cornelia Gruber is postdoctoral researcher in ethnomusicolgoy at the Unviersity of Vienna. Her research and teaching center on gender and queer studies, and dance anthropology, with a focus on decolonizing and feminist perspectives. In 2018 she earned her PhD from the University of Vienna. Her doctoral thesis, “Gendered Dance Spaces. An Intersectional Approach to Dancing in Southwest Madagascar,” deals with issues of gender interdependencies, embodiment of relational positionalities and performativity through the act of dancing.

the world of music (new series)

a journal of the department of musicology of the georg august university göttingen

ISSN 0043 8774