Fiona Magowan is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist at Queen’s University Belfast. She is also Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace Security and Justice at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her ethnographic research covers three interconnected areas: music, sound and movement; art, emotion and the senses; and religion, identity and transformation. She has conducted long-term research in north east Arnhem Land, Australia, Queensland and South Australia, with recent research in Brazil and Mozambique.

As a Research Lead of Religion, Arts and Peacebuilding in the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, she is examining comparative aspects of arts and conflict transformation, specifically through music, identity and peacebuilding around the globe.

She was Principal Investigator of the AHRC Partnership for Conflict Crime and Security (PaCCS) funded project, 'Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation' (2017-2022) with seven Queen's staff and ten partner organisations researching sound, music and storytelling across the Middle East, Brazil and Northern Ireland (https://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/SoundingConflict/).

She has published eight books including, Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation (Bloomsbury Academic 2023 co-authored with J. Norman, A. Phillips-Hutton, S. Lehner and P. Rebelo), Christianity, Conflict, and Renewal in Australia and the Pacific (Brill 2016, co-edited with Carolyn Schwarz); Performing Gender, Place, and Emotion (Rochester 2013, co-edited with L. Wrazen), The Anthropology of Sex (Berg 2010, co-authored with H. Donnan); Transgressive Sex: Control and Subversion in Erotic Encounters (Berghahn 2009, co-edited with H. Donnan) and Melodies of Mourning: Music and Emotion in Northern Australia (Oxford, James Currey 2007).