Professor Samantha Sebastian
Professor Samantha Sebastian
My main research interests lie in music and migration, intercultural relations, and collective voice. One strand of my research focuses on the musical lives of migrant and former refugee communities, in emigration, diaspora and resettlement. Another focuses on the functionalisation of music as public pedagogy to enable self-representation and address intergroup conflict. In other projects I’ve examined the construction and experience of ‘diversity’ in secondary school music curricula. My current project is a community-engaged diasporic study about the interface between the musical voice and global labour migration, particularly in relation to Overseas Filipino Workers.
I publish on these topics in journals and edited volumes across ethnomusicology, community music, and music education, and serve on the editorial boards of International Journal of Community Music and Research Studies in Music Education.
My teaching for the Music Faculty includes convening courses on ‘Foundations in the Study of Music’, ‘Music in the Community’, ‘History and Philosophy of Music Education’, and ‘Music Education: Practice and Pedagogy’. In addition to these courses, at Somerville College, I provide tutorials for the modules on ‘Musical Thought and Scholarship’, ‘Critical Studies in Ethnomusicology’, ‘World Jazz’, and ‘Women in Popular Music’.
Recent postgraduate supervisees’ dissertation titles include, ‘Institutional music education and public pedagogy in Afghanistan’ (DPhil), ‘Music and trust in international relations: Bilateral relationship between Canada and France’ (DPhil), ‘Black musicians and accessibility to music education and the classical music industry, UK and US’ (MPhil), ‘Music integration programmes for migrants in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’ (MPhil).