People
SARC is a research community involving over forty five academic staff and over thirty PhD researchers at Queen’s University Belfast from across the School or Arts, English & Languages, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, School of Psychology, School of the Natural and Built Environment, School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics. The breath of interests and expertise reflects multiple and varied approaches to sound and music research. Flexible groupings form research focus in specific areas, interdisciplinary research supervision and project based teams. Below is a list of all research staff, PhD researchers, technical and support staff in alphabetical order. If you are interested in becoming a member please contact SARC’s Director, Professor Pedro Rebelo p.rebelo@qub.ac.uk.
Senior Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
Dr Trevor Agus is a hearing researcher interested in how we make sense of the complex soundscapes we live in.
He develops perceptually-motived signal-processing techniques to manipulate everyday sounds in perceptually relevant ways, whether to preserve TV audio for those with hearing losses or to facilitate controlled manipulation of audio.
His PhD work, at the Institute of Hearing Research in Glasgow, showed that elderly listeners’ difficulty understanding speech when two people talk at once stemmed primarily from changes in the ear, not from any cognitive changes. His postdoctoral work, at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, focused on sound recognition, demonstrating the complexity of features that we use to recognise everyday sounds and showing that we can rapidly learn to recognise novel sounds that seem initially indistinguishable. He teaches the “the musical sciences” (acoustics, auditory perception and music psychology) to music students.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/trevor-agus
Reader, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work
Underpinning my intellectual and practitioner 'work' is a concern with the impact of interpretative frameworks - the ways in which their dynamics of power constrain or enable agency for social justice, and the significance of this for the academic project and artistic historic responsibility.
Against this tide, I am interested in how various levers and modes may act to develop and enable the conditions for critical consciousness and solidarity within these two potentially powerful groups of actors (academics and artists) who bear responsibility for representation in societies.
My particular concern is with contexts that are grappling with the legacies of post-conflict, widely defined, including post-colonial contexts. As such, I am currently working with those undertaking projects, networks and practitioner work in South Africa and SADC, India, East Africa, with academic refugees in Turkey, and a number of other projects.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/dina-belluigi
Reader, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work
Dr Paul Best is Research Director for the Centre for Technological Innovation, Mental Health and Education at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has published over 50 research articles in the area Digital Mental Health and the use of Technology for Education and Training.
Recently he was appointed by the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to co-lead the development of the country’s digital mental health and action plan. Dr Best has degrees in Media, Social Work and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and his doctoral thesis examined the influence of social media use on young people’s mental health. As well as his academic work, Dr Best continues to practice as a CBT therapist with clinical interests in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder and Depression. This is a service he provides free of charge to local mental health charities in Northern Ireland.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/paul-best
Abhiram Bhanuprakash is pursuing a PhD at the School of EEECS, QUB, and is supervised by Dr. Maarten van Walstijn and Prof. Paul Stapleton. His research at SARC is focused on the design and making of virtual-acoustic instruments.
This interdisciplinary topic brings together various fields such as physical modelling, numerical methods, sensing, and music performance practices. He was a Marie Curie early stage researcher in the VRACE project (https://vrace-etn.eu).
Abhiram holds an M.Sc (Engg.) degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where his research focus was speech technology, and a BE degree in Electronics and Communications from Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering, Mysore. Additionally, he has received training in Carnatic vocal music from renowned musician and musicologist Prof. C.A. Sreedhar in Mysore.
Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
Zeynep Bulut is a Lecturer in Music at Queen’s University Belfast. Prior to joining the faculty at QUB, she was an Early Career Lecturer in Music at King's College London (2013-2017), and postdoctoral research fellow at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (2011-2013).
She received her PhD in Critical Studies/Experimental Practices in Music from the University of California, San Diego (2011). Her research interests include voice and sound studies, experimental music, sound and media art, technologies of hearing and speech, voice and environment, and music and medicine. Her first manuscript, titled, Building a Voice: Sound, Surface, Skin (under contract with Goldsmiths Press), explores the emergence, embodiment, and mediation of voice as skin.
Her articles have appeared in various volumes and journals including Perspectives of New Music, Postmodern Culture, and Music and Politics. Alongside her scholarly work, she has also exhibited sound works, composed and performed vocal pieces for concert, video, and theatre, and released two singles. Her composer profile has been featured by British Music Collection.
She is a certified practitioner of Deep Listening, and project lead for the research network, Music, Arts, Health, and Environment (MAHE) supported by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Impact Acceleration Account at QUB, and the collaborative research project ""Map A Voice,” initiated with the support of the Department of Media and Computing & Rapid-Mix at Goldsmiths, University of London and Early Career Researchers Scheme of the Cultural Institute at King’s College London.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/zeynep-bulut
Research Fellow, School of Natural and Built Environment
Edwar’s inter/trans/disciplinary research spans urban development, human geography, architecture, public policy and education with a specific interest in the socio-spatial transformations in geographies of (post)conflict.
This has led my research into systematic socio-spatial justice and uneven development, global economy and its effects on local conflicts, politics of invisibility, (post)conflict and forced displacement, socio-spatial alienation-integration, marginality and conflict, the concept of informal governance as collective agency and empowering communities, housing policy and practice, urban transformations and pedagogical methods for peacebuilding through arts and music in contexts of marginality within extractive economies and geographies of violence.
His research seeks proactively impact on society through public engagement in the UK and internationally. For instance, using participatory methods, he initiated a peace agreement between local government and the young gangs in Quibdó, Colombia in 2017. His research has also impacted social housing policy for Internal Displaced Populations (IDPs) in Medellín, Colombia. He also participated in an advocacy forum to the Congress of the Republic of Colombia for the modification of Law 1448 of 2011 which measures care, assistance, and comprehensive reparation to the victims of the internal armed conflict in the country. His work has also been featured in widely-known media such as The Guardian (May 2018), BBC NI Radio (April 2022; July 2023).
Finally, convinced of the pedagogical benefits of research-informed teaching, he has incorporated his research into both teaching and thesis supervision, where he emphasises the benefits of cross-disciplinary research.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/edwar-calderon
Lecturer, MediaLab
Jia-Rey Chang is a Taiwanese artist/designer/researcher/educator focusing on immersive spatial Interaction Design.
“Looking for the evolving relationship between the human body and space mediated by technology” and “utilizing technology as a creative medium to tackle and arouse current social/humanity questions” have always been the main concepts throughout his creative research and artworks. After completing his M.Arch degree in Architecture and Urban Design Department, UCLA, under the direction of Neil Denari in 2009, he returned to his Alma mater, the Architecture Department at TamKang University, Taiwan, to research interactive and parametric architecture. In 2010, he established “P&A LAB” (lately integrated into archgary.com to continue) exploring the new possible relationship between programming and architecture.
He received his Ph.D. from the Hyperbody Lab at TU Delft, the Netherlands in 2018 with the dissertation “HyperCell: A Bio-inspired Design Frameworks for Real-time Interactive Architectures”. He was an assistant professor at the Art & Design department, University of Delaware, USA (2018-2022). Currently, he is a lecturer in the MediaLab, Queen’s University Belfast, UK, investigating using Games and Emerging Technologies as creative concepts and mediums to create experimental interactive immersive sensory spaces. His works cover trans-disciplinary topics of creative coding, speculative/interactive/parametric design, fashion/wearable design, AI, generative art/sound, and AR/VR/MR, projection-based immersive environments. More info: archgary.com.
j.chang@qub.ac.uk
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/jia-rey-chang
Cameron Clarke is a Sonic artist from Belfast whose practice revolves around a playful interaction with the environment.
His work has taken the form of field recordings, sound installations, short films, public interventions and sound sculptures. Cameron has presented work at the Belfast Imagine Festival, Golden Thread Gallery and the Hatton Gallery alongside working with organisations such as The Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association and the Digital Arts Studios Belfast.
Composer Robert Coleman is currently a PhD student at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast focusing on Ecological Sound Art. His current work draws from numerous fields such as soundscape studies, site-specific art, field recording, and community and participatory arts.
In 2019 he completed his Masters studies at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague with Yannis Kyriakides and Diderik Wagenaar and having also previously studied architecture his work often features spatial concepts and metaphors as frameworks for the composition process.
He has been commissioned by Crash Ensemble and New Music Dublin, the National Concert Hall Dublin, Irish National Opera, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Tallaght Community Arts, violinist Larissa O’Grady and others.
Highly active in artistic direction he is a founding member and performer with Dublin based experimental music group Kirkos and in In 2023 he founded the School of Wild Listening, a platform for the discussion and dissemination of ecological sound art.
Senior Lecturer (Education), School of Arts, English and Languages
Chris Corrigan is a Tonmeister (Music and Sound Recording) graduate of the University of Surrey.
He joined the staff at Queen’s University in 1996 as Studio Assistant for the School of Music and later as Technical Manager of the Sonic Arts Research Centre from its inception in 2001 until 2014. In 2014 he joined the academic staff at Queen's and he served as Subject Lead for Music between July 2018 and September 2022.
Chris is an active audio engineer with particular interests in recording techniques for spatial audio reproduction. His recording work is primarily in the field of contemporary acoustic and electro-acoustic music and his recordings have been released on the Mode, Delphian, Métier, Diatribe, Divine Art and RTÉ Lyric FM labels. Recent engineering credits include Ulster Orchestra, Fidelio Trio, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Yurodny, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, Mornington Singers, and Vanburgh Quartet.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/chris-corrigan
Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
Dr John D’Arcy is an artist and researcher based at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC). His research interests include technology-mediated live performance, voice-based intermedia artwork, and participatory song-making.
His recent project Pathways is a collaboration with Malta-based dance scholar and artist Paula Guzzanti, looking at how sensorial experience can be mediated using digital art to explore sustainable living practices.
His project Do You Hear What I Hear? involves interactive experiences that allow audiences to explore the diversity of human hearing using a smartphone and headphones.
John currently directs experimental vocal ensemble HIVE Choir, creating improvised music with an interdisciplinary group of artists for site-specific performances.
John is a board member of the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association and curates sound art exhibitions and events at Sonorities Festival, Belfast.
John delivers courses in interactive media and audio production at QUB and co-ordinates outreach activities at SARC for NI Science Festival.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/john-darcy
Senior Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
My specialism focusses on broadcast and film production as well as music and sound for screen and media. Working in a variety of forms that include TV, film and radio documentary, sound design for film, TV and radio and music composition for screen and media,
I have an interest in story, narrative, production, technology and how these forms can be explored to change how we perceive and interact with our society, our world cultures and our physical environment. My research and practice interests include story, film, tv, radio, music, sound, photography, practice as research, creativity, psychology, archive creation and documenting.
I have 25 years industry experience writing, directing, producing, editing, photographing, sound designing and composing music for national and international film, tv and radio and film for broadcasters such as National Geographic, Discovery Channel, BBC, Channel 4, RTE, TG4, CNN, MTV, PBS(USA) and Screen Ireland.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/frank-delaney
Senior Lecturer, School of Natural and Built Environment
With work/life experience in Ireland, Netherlands, Turkey, UK and USA, Dr Gul Kacmaz Erk has been conducting research in the areas of cinematic architecture since the 1990s, and humanitarian architecture more recently.
Before joining Queen’s Architecture in 2011, she worked as a licenced architect in Istanbul and Amsterdam, researched at the University of Pennsylvania, University College Dublin and Z/KU Berlin, and taught at Philadelphia (Thomas Jefferson) University, TU Delft and Izmir University of Economics.
She holds BArch (METU), MArch (METU) and PhD (ITU) degrees in Architecture, directs CACity: Cinema and Architecture in the City research group (www.cacity.org), organises Walled Cities film seasons in Northern Ireland, and conducts urban filmmaking workshops worldwide.
Gul is a Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, the director of MSc Advanced Architectural Design and PGCert Cinematic Architecture programmes, a member of the RIBA Validation Panel and a fellow of Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/gul-kacmaz-erk
Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology
Tim is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist and developmental psychologist who is broadly interested in the development of speech, language and literacy.
His recent work has focused on the auditory precursors to speech processing and the impact that these have on later literacy development and vocabulary learning.
He works with both typically and atypically developing populations of children, using classroom observation, cognitive, psychometric, psychoacoustic, and cognitive neuroscience (predominantly EEG) methods.
He is director of the Language, Learning and Literacy Lab at Queen’s (L3Lab@QUB) which houses a developmental EEG laboratory and audiometric testing facilities.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/tim-fosker
Isaac Gibson is an award-winning Northern Irish DJ, producer and sound designer. He has over ten years of experience in the music industry and is currently studying a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen's University Belfast, with a focus on Music Technology , Socially Engaged Sonic Arts and Sound Design.
In recent years he has worked on the scores and sound design of many short films and theatrical productions that have been showcased at the Lyric Theatre, the MAC and at various other institutions across Europe.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/isaac-gibson
Lecturer, School of Psychology
My research interests are broadly in the assessment and management of psychological wellbeing and quality of life in chronic conditions, where I have published >30 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
In particular I am interested in-
- Psychological adjustment and quality of life in cancer and palliative and end of life care populations, including intervention development (e.g. music therapy, mindfulness, ACT)
- Validation and implementation of outcome measures, particularly quality of life measures and psychological distress screening tools, and development of core outcome sets
- Building resilience in healthcare professionals
- Bereavement
- Public health approaches to palliative and end of life care (e.g. upstreaming advance care planning, death literacy, volunteer-led care)
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/lisa-graham-wisener
Vivienne Griffin (they/them) is an anti-disciplinary artist who uses sound, sculpture, drawing and text in various forms. Griffin works with the voice in virtual worlds and runs a vocal workshop called Synthetic Voices.
Born in Dublin, Ireland and living in London, Griffin studied fine art at Hunter City University New York supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. They completed one year DPhil in visual art at the Royal College of Art, where they are now an Associate Lecturer.
They moved their research to the Sonic Arts Research Center, Queen's University, Belfast in 2020 to pursue a PhD in Music with a focus on sound in an art context. Recent shows include Transmediale, 2023, Camden Arts Center listening session, 2023, Manchester International Festival, 2021, AGM in Somerset House, 2021.
They won an Oram Award in 2021, they are a resident at Somerset House Studios, London.
Belfast-based artist Helena Hamilton works both visually and sonically.
Her practice crosses the lines between creating objects, sound, digital interaction, and action/performance. Her current research focuses on creating works between digital and physical environments while negotiating the relationship between the sonic and visual.
Hamilton has previously exhibited and performed in both gallery spaces and contemporary music/sound festivals across the UK and Ireland, in addition to Berlin, Rome, Tokyo, and New York.
Recent solo exhibitions include Virtual Matter [Ambient], The Naughton Gallery, Belfast (2022); Perceptions, The Agency Gallery, London (2020). Group exhibitions include Dissolving Histories: New Narratives, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2018/2019); LUX, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Ireland. (2018).
Composed sound works for film include Parenting in the Pandemic: Pandemonium, BBC iPlayer (2021); and Epilogue, Dance Film, Belfast International Arts Festival (2021). Showcases include Digital Design Weekend, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2017). Artist residencies include Art Centre Ongoing, Tokyo, Japan (2016); and Goldsmiths University of London, EAVI Group (2015).
Hamilton is currently completing a PhD in Sonic Arts Research Centre, QUB.
Professor, School of Arts, English and Languages
Moyra Haslett acted as PI for the AHRC-funded project A Historical Typology of Irish Song from the earliest beginnings to 1850 between 2013 and 2015.
A website linked to the project giving facsimiles and transcripts of a diversity of Irish songs can be viewed at: . The site also includes specially commissioned recordings of early song. Haslett is co-editor with Dr Conor Caldwell and Prof Lillis Ó Laoire of The Oxford Handbook of Irish Song, from the earliest beginnings to 1850 (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). This is the first book to bring chapters on different kinds of Irish song and from varied traditions into one volume. Its contributors include musicologists, ethnomusicologists, singers, literary critics, linguists, historians and many independent scholars researching beyond the academy. Many of the chapters are currently available through Oxford Handbooks Online.
Queen’s was well-placed to host the Irish Song Project: Special Collections in the McClay library holds extensive and unique materials on early Irish song, particularly the Edward Bunting archive and the Thomas Moore collection. The manuscripts in the Bunting archive alone contain notations of c.1000 tunes and c.500 song texts which were current in late eighteenth-century Ireland. For an on-line exhibition concerning the Bunting collection follow this link http://go.qub.ac.uk/BuntingExhibition
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/moyra-haslett
Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
My research focuses on the history of genres within their industrial, social and cultural contexts, particularly concentrating on fantastic genres such as science fiction and horror as represented on television.
My doctoral thesis examined the origins of British television science fiction, covering all of the productions broadcast between 1936 and the arrival of commercial television in 1955.
I moved on to exploring the links between genres and seasonality, and between television and the seasons, leading to my monograph on seasonal horror for Palgrave entitled Haunted Seasons: Television Ghost Stories for Christmas and Horror for Halloween, a special issue of the Journal of Popular Television on television seasonality, and a dossier for the same journal specifically on Christmas television.
I am also interested in the broad field of investigating popular culture and its expressions, and how these relate to cultural change. I am particularly interested in ideas of identity, nostalgia, history, and the usefulness of genres which put some distance between the everyday and the narrative, such as science fiction, horror, and historical dramas. In addition to an edited collection on Nigel Kneale and Horror, I am developing research considering the different modes of historical drama, with an initial focus on the Gothic mode.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/derek-johnston
Leonid Kuzmenko is a composer/sound designer and researcher at Queen’s University Belfast.
His chamber music works include quartets, quintets, music for solo saxophone with tape, and operas. He also produces music for film, dance, and video games. He currently works with VR, music, and dementia, designing immersive virtual environments for revoking positive memories.
Reader, School of Natural and Built Environment
Dr Sarah Lappin is an architect and historian. She teaches history/theory and design and was the first-ever woman to be appointed Head of Architecture in Queen’s University history.
She was Chair of the Architectural Humanities Research Association for six years https://ahra-architecture.org and is currently External Examiner at the Bartlett School of Architecture.
With Prof. Gascia Ouzounian, Oxford, she co-directs the long-running transdisciplinary project Recomposing the City www.recomposingthecity.org. Since 2012, their work has produced multiple publications, grants, PhD studentships, conference and workshop presentations, student projects, and consultations with decision makers about sound and the built environment.
Dr Lappin's is currently working on a monograph questioning the domestic soundscape of Modernity, examining the sonic architectural history of several canonical 20th century houses. The project makes use of multiple methodologies including primary archival sources, interviews and extended site visits as a means to contribute to this growing form of architectural history.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/sarah-lappin
Senior Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
Stefanie Lehner is Senior Lecturer in Irish Literature and Fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice (QUB).
Her research explores the role of the arts and sound, specifically performance, in conflict transformation processes, with a focus on the Northern Irish context. She is also interested in representations of trauma and memory in (Northern) Irish drama, fiction, film, and photography.
She has been working on the PaCCS/AHRC-funded project, Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation (2017-2022).
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/stefanie-lehner
I’m Xiaoyu Liu, a second-year PhD student in the Music Department. I obtained my bachelor's degree in Musicology at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music in China, and later completed my postgraduate degree in Music Performance Studies at the University of Sheffield. In China, I taught piano and basic music theory at the university.
As a pianist, I have participated in many competitions and accompaniments.
My teaching and performance experience has made me aware that contemporary performers have a wide range of interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach's works. This has also motivated me to explore the understanding of the 'authenticity' of early music, and the contemporary performance practice of J.S. Bach's music. Based on J.S Bach’s keyboard work ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’, my research is mainly concerned with critical edition, performance conventions, and authenticity under the influence of postmodernism. I am pursuing my PhD under the supervision of Prof. Yo Tomita and Dr. Zeynep Bulut.
Professor, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
Fiona Magowan is Professor of Anthropology, Research Theme Lead for Peacebuilding and Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace Security and Justice at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Her ethnographic research covers the areas of 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 other research in Brazil and Mozambique.
As PI of the AHRC (PACCS) funded project (2017-2022) she has been examining comparative aspects of arts and conflict transformation, through sound, music and peacebuilding. She is author or co-editor of eight books, including Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation (Bloomsbury 2022 with J. Norman, A. Phillips-Hutton, S. Lehner and P. Rebelo), Performing Gender, Place and Emotion: Global Perspectives (Rochester 2013 co-ed. with L. Wrazen) and Melodies of Mourning: Music and Emotion in Northern Australia (Oxford: James Currey 2007).
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/fiona-magowan
Professor, School of Arts, English and Languages
Simon Mawhinney is a composer. He teaches music in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen's University Belfast.
Read more Read lessBelfast-based drummer/composer Conor McAuley works in the seams of free improvisation, alt post-punk music, Irish traditional music, and human-computer interaction.
Drawing inspiration from elements of consciousness and experience, cognitive science and enactivism, he is currently undertaking a practice led PhD at Queen’s University, Belfast, titled ‘Musical Pathways: Exploring bodily movement in improvised drumming’.
Within the university, Conor is currently co-director of the long-standing experimental ensemble QUBe, as well as an assistant lecturer and performance tutor.
His music has been featured alongside the likes of William Parker and Evelyn Glennie, and received national and international airplay. His activities at the Sonic Arts Research Centre have led to his work being presented across numerous academic institutes including the Orpheus Institute, Belgium. Conor also tours the world regularly.
A prolific collaborator, he has worked alongside numerous improvisers, including Una Lee, Sarmen Almond, Adam-Pultz-Melbye, Simon Waters, Paul Stapleton, and John Bowers, among many others.
Photo credit: Claire Loughran
Reader, School of Arts, English and Languages
Sarah McCleave is an historical musicologist interested in the study of networks. These involve the dissemination of Irish song, 1780-1860 (particularly repertory associated with Thomas Moore) and the professionalisation of female theatre dancers, 1720-1860.
Horizon 2020 funding from the EU supported project ERIN (Europe's Reception of the Irish Melodies and National Airs), www.erin.qub.ac.uk; her current project 'Fame and the Female Dancer' was supported by the Leverhulme Foundation in 2020 and also the Houghton Library.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/sarah-mccleave
Paddy McKeown is a Belfast based guitarist and multi-instrumentalist musician. He works at the intersection of traditional, electroacoustic, improvisatory and experimental music.
Paddy released his first solo album, The Good Step, in 2020, and its follow up is currently in development. He has just released a new album with Córas Trio, which can be heard on their recent Radio 6 live session. He is an active session musician with past projects having seen him play festivals such as EFG London Jazz, Celtic Connections, WOMEX and Birmingham TradFest.
Paddy has received multiple awards including from Arts Council NI and Freelands Foundation, and his various projects have received airplay on KEXP, BBC and NTS radio. He is now undertaking a practice led PhD at Queen’s University, Belfast, titledtitled “Developing Irish Traditional Music Performance through Improvisation and Feedback Musicianship”.
My PhD project in SARC primarily looks at physics-based emulation of spring reverberation tanks. Broadly, this includes numerical modelling of the underlying partial differential equations – focusing both on designing a modal algorithm that captures the key features of spring reverb, while also developing a better understanding of the underlying physics of the tank operation. My personal research interests cover physical modelling in any music and audio context.
School of Arts, English and Languages
Matilde Meireles is a sound artist and researcher who makes use of field recordings to compose site-oriented projects.
Her work has a multi-sensorial, durational and multi-perspective critical approach to site, where Matilde investigates the potential of listening across spectrums and scales as ways to attune to various ecosystems and articulate plural experiences of the world. Some examples include the inner architectures of reeds and complex water ecologies, resonances in everyday objects, local neighbourhoods and the architecture of radio signals. Her work is presented regularly in the form of concerts, installations, album releases, community-based projects and academic publications. She holds a PhD in Sonic Arts from SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music, Queen’s University Belfast.
Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
Úna Monaghan is a harper, composer, researcher and sound artist. She collaborates with poets, visual artists, computers, writers, musicians, and others.
Her research examines the intersections between Irish traditional music, experimental music practices, improvisation and interactive technologies.
She performs solo with harp and electronics, and with sextet Stone Drawn Circles. She has released two albums of her compositions, most recently Aonaracht, for solo traditional musicians and electronics. Úna received the inaugural Liam O’Flynn Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and the National Concert Hall Dublin, and held the Rosamund Harding Research Fellowship in Music at Newnham College, University of Cambridge from 2016-2019. Úna has worked internationally as a live sound engineer, specialising in Irish traditional, experimental, live electronic and multichannel music.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/una-monaghan
Principal Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work
My overarching research interest is the investigation of social and educational innovation. Generally, my work uses design, implementation and evaluation research to study innovative programmes and supports which aim to improve population level outcomes such as attainment and wellbeing.
I have a particular focus on improving attainment and wellbeing outcomes for children and young people in disadvantaged schools or communities. To achieve this, I work extensively with a wide range of stakeholders and utilise my considerable expertise in prevention and early intervention research methods including: programme logic modelling; participatory co-design of interventions; implementation science; psychometrics; and using randomised controlled trials to evaluate intervention effectiveness.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/liam-ohare
Aga Olek is an acclaimed violinist, singer and producer writing music as Pinsleep.
Aga is a current PhD researcher at SARC, Queen’s University Belfast where she is exploring human- machine collaboration through writing music with generative technologies. Through her work she is also questioning the dynamics of relations between humans and AI, asking about the possible ways of future development and the power structure within them. What does it mean to exist? And can a machine become 'human'? Can we trust each other having very different measures for operating within the reality as we perceive it?
Looking from a perspective of a woman and an artist, it is a search for new ways of co-existence and possibly new artforms, where the mutual input leads to fresh paths for creativity.
Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work
Yecid Ortega is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Education, and Social Work where he teaches graduate classes in TESOL and applied linguistics.
He finished his doctoral program in Language and Literacies Education (LLE) with a collaborative specialization in Comparative International, and Development Education (CIDE) at OISE – University of Toronto (Canada). He has over 20 years of international experience (Colombia, the USA, Canada, and the UK) in the field of language education and plurilingualism. He explores the linguistic and cultural lived experiences of migrant communities and the ways in which they assert their identities while integrating and resettling into the receiving societies. He currently focuses on alternative and multimodal forms of research including but not limited to arts-based, creative, critical, and post-material methodologies to understand one’s place in the world. Most recently, he has been engaging in soundwalking methodologies to learn more about how communities engage with diverse spaces to assert their identities in the cities (e.g., Belfast), thus leading to his project Soundscapes of the Diver[City].
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/yecid-ortega
Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
Miguel Ortiz is a Mexican composer, sound artist and digital instrument maker. His research explores a vast array of performing mediums ranging from traditional acoustic instruments such as cello and trumpet, to laptop improvisation, performance with bio-instruments and hyperinstruments.
Ortiz brings expertise on novel instrument design and the broader ecosystems in which musical instruments are used for improvisation and composition. His research contains a particular interest into chaotic systems and the tension between control and emergence in musical expression.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/miguel-ortiz
Senior Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
Dr Ricki O’Rawe is a Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies in Queen’s University Belfast.
His research investigates questions of identity (religious, philosophical, political) in Latin American literature and art and has been published in the Hispanic Research Journal, the Bulletin of Spanish Studies, and the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, among others. In particular, he is interested in artistic responses to the crises of Modernity and the diversification of self-creation that emerged as a result.
His recent work has embraced a decolonial praxis by incorporating practice-based and performative elements in collaboration with others to explore the possibilities of improvisation as a mode of remaining open to radical futures. This work was released by RESIST-AV in 2020 and included in the TULCA International Arts Festival in 2022.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/ricki-orawe
Pedro is a composer, sound artist and researcher. In 2002, he was awarded a PhD by the University of Edinburgh where he conducted research in music and architecture.
Pedro has recently led participatory projects involving communities in Belfast, favelas in Maré, Rio de Janeiro, travelling communities in Portugal and a slum town in Mozambique.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/pedro-rebelo
Reader, School of Arts, English and Languages
Dave Robb is a Reader in Music at QUB. His research has focussed on the role of musical forms of protest in German history going back to 1848. His first book 'Zwei Clowns im Lande des verlorenen Lachens. Das Liedertheater Wenzel and Mensching' was published in Berlin in 1998.
He was editor and main author of 'Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s' (2007) and co-author of 'Songs for a Revolution. The 1848 Protest Song Tradition in Germany' with Eckhard John (2020). This book stemmed from an AHRC/DFG-funded online research project with the University of Freiburg (2008-12).
He is currently the holder of an AHRC Fellowship on ‘The Political Songs of Gerhard Gundermann in an East German and International Context’. As a songwriter and bouzouki player, he has released solo albums, performed at international festivals, and toured with artists such as the Proclaimers. Dave was also an original member of the Scottish folk group Rua.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/david-robb
Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology
I am interested in perceptual-motor coordination and skill development, with a specific focus on auditory-motor coordination.
My research includes questions of how people time movements to auditory events, such as synchronising with a beat, walking to rhythmic sounds (particularly as an aid for people with Parkinson's), or catching a moving object without vision.
I am interested in how ‘movement sonification’ (transforming movements into sounds in real-time) might enhance learning of motor skills. This involves both fundamental research into perceptual-motor learning, as well as applications to habilitation for children and adults with Visual Impairments.
I also research skill in musical ecologies, including understanding how sound-movement coupling emerges through musical training, processes that influence enhance musical skill development, and understanding skillful adaptability in the context of music improvisation. Across all these topics, I want to understand how perceptual information can guide skillful action, as well as the implications for philosophy of mind.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/matthew-rodger
Lecturer, School of Psychology
My research focuses on expressions of emotions, their effects, and the mechanisms underlying their perception and interpretation. At QUB, I work with Dr. William Curran and Dr. Gary McKeown.
Our team investigates social functions and characteristics of laughter produced in different contexts. I am also interested in facial expressions of emotions, especially the smile, which is arguably the most complex and versatile among them.
Some of my studies explore how eye contact and facial mimicry influence facial expression processing in infants and adults. Other projects examine cross-cultural differences in smiling and effects of smiles (as well as other emotion expressions such as regret or guilt) on economic decisions in interpersonal and intergroup settings.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/magdalena-rychlowska
Professor, School of Arts, English and Languages
Professor of Music and Cultures / Performance without Barriers Team
Founded in 2015, Performance without Barriers is a research partnership between Queen’s University Belfast’s and the Drake Music Project Northern Ireland. Together we explore the role of technology in removing the access barriers encountered by some disabled musicians in creative pursuits.
Our work is rooted in the social model of disability, seeing disability as arising from attitudes in society and the design of our environment. Through participatory design practices, all of our work is led by the insights of the disabled community.
We view music as an important and powerful medium for personal expression, with the potential to amplify the voices of those marginalised in society. We therefore focus our efforts on building sustainable environments for inclusive music-making that live beyond our research projects.
Performance without Barriers is the proud recipient of the 2020 Vice Chancellors Prize for Research Innovation
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/franziska-schroeder
In 2016 she received the Kenneth Tynan Award for Excellence in Dramaturgy and in 2017 an Elliot Hayes Award special commendation, for her work on the immersive audio play Reassembled Slightly Askew by Shannon Yee.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/hanna-slattne
Michael Speers (b. 1992) is a musician from Portaferry, County Down.
Working with natural & synthetic sound material—using drums, computer, microphones, feedback—towards composition, performance and installation.
He is currently focused on the actual and notional representation of the ground drum. Collaborators include: Paul Abbott (as yPLO), John Wall, Luciano Maggiore and Louise Le Du. Recordings published by Anòmia, C.A.N.V.A.S., Takuroku and Wasted Capital Since 2013.
Professor, School of Arts, English and Languages
Paul Stapleton is an improviser and sound artist originally from Southern California. He performs with his custom-made instruments in locations ranging from Echtzeitmusik venues in Berlin to the annual NIME conference.
Paul is currently Professor of Music at SARC in Belfast, where he teaches and supervises research in new musical instrument design, music performance and critical improvisation studies. He is also currently the director of Sonorities Festival Belfast.
Paul has received critical acclaim for several artistic projects, including his album FAUNA with saxophonist Simon Rose, and for his sound design and composition work as part of the immersive audio theatre piece Reassembled, Slightly Askew.
Website: paulstapleton.net
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/paul-stapleton
Professor, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
Co-Director, Centre for Creative Ethnography (CFCE)
Maruška Svašek is Professor of Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast and Fellow of the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice.
Her research interests include creative ethnography and the affective relationality of humans, artefacts and spaces in an era of globalization, transnational connectivity and environmental change.
Her publications include Ethnographies of Movement, Sociality and Space: Place-Making in the New Northern Ireland (2018, with Milena Komarova), Creativity in Transition: Politics and Aesthetics of Cultural Production Across the Globe (2016, with Birgit Meyer), Emotions and Human Mobility: Ethnographies of Movement (2012), Moving Subjects, Moving Objects: Transnationalism, Cultural Production and Emotions (2012), Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production (2007), Postsocialism: Politics and Emotions in Central and Eastern Europe (2006) and Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies of Feelings (2005, with Kay Milton).
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/maruska-svasek
Professor, School of Natural and Built Environment
I have broad research interests in Earth System Science and work on topics concerning both past, present and future environmental and climatic change. I work in a diverse range of environments from Arctic tundra to tropical rainforests and many places in-between!
My specific research foci include:
- Climate change in the past-present-future;
- Long-term eco-hydrological dynamics and functioning of temperate, tropical and subarctic peatlands;
- Limnology and Palaeolimnology;
- Testate amoebae as environmental indicators in peatlands and lakes;
- High-resolution dating methods including tephrochronology;
- Critical examination of past human response and adaptation to climate change;
- Use of temporal data and probability modelling in geohazards research;
- Use of quantitative reconstruction and statistical modelling techniques for understanding climatic and environmental change;
- Extreme events;
- Human-environment relations in the past-present-future, the Anthropocene, and the impacts of humans on Planet Earth;
- Numerical methods in ecological and geological research (particularly using R).
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/graeme-swindles
Professor, School of Arts, English and Languages
Yo Tomita (b.1961) is a scholar known internationally for his work on the manuscript sources of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach (esp. the Well-Tempered Clavier II), the Bach Bibliography and musicological font, Bach.
Read more Read lessSenior Lecturer, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
Ioannis’s main research has focused on music professionalism and the impact of globalisation on Greek subcultures and their conceptions of musical creativity.
His current research is concentrating on musical labour and precarity and the way that it shapes understandings of musical competence, aesthetics, and the social dynamics of local ‘scenes’.
Further research interests include:
- The concept of the ‘social imaginary’ and its relevance to processes of music eclecticism
- The ethnographic study of modalities of discursive resistance among music practitioners
- The relationship between economic/political crisis and ideas of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eclecticism within popular music-making in Greece and the wider Mediterranean
- Covid-19 and its impact on performing artists in Greece and Ireland
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/ioannis-tsioulakis
Dr Georgios Varoutsos is a sound artist and researcher from Montreal, Canada. He is completing his PhD at Queen's University Belfast with SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music.
He received a Master's in Research in Arts & Humanities with a concentration in Sonic Arts from Queen's University Belfast, passing with distinction. Additionally, he earned a BFA with Distinction in Electroacoustic Studies and a BA in Anthropology from Concordia University in Montreal.
As an artist, he investigates sound through a wide range of projects that have been presented internationally in the form of concerts, installations, exhibitions, and conferences. He is presently interested in research involving urban arts, spatial audio, sonic arts, and socially engaged arts.
Website: https://georgiosvaroutsos.com/
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/georgios-varoutsos
Senior Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages
Brought up by parents who taught in Art Schools and ran a gallery in which they both exhibited contemporary artists and gave a platform to poets (Bunting, Hughes, MacCaig, emerging ‘Bloodaxe’ poets) in the late 60s/early 70s.
From childhood taught by Christine & Layton Ring, early music specialists in the Dolmetsch circle. Composing with tape recorders from age 11.
London premiere of first electroacoustic work 1980 St Johns Smith Square, London. Active as composer and improviser from this point.
1981-84 trained in Grotowski theatre method in Cardiff, working with pioneering multimedia theatre co Moving Being, Paupers Carnival Theatre and in collaborations with Cardiff Laboratory Theatre. Workshops w. Academia Ruchu (Warsaw) Odin Teatret, Els Comediants, Mike Pearson.
Founder member Dance Wales. 1983-90 working as composer with major choreographers/dance companies (Ballet Rambert, Richard Alston (Dangerous Liaisons), Mary Evelyn, Matthew Bourne, Scottish Ballet, Ashley Page). Electroacoustic concert work performed worldwide. Invited composer EMS Stockholm 1985-9, GES Vierzon 1986-7, HAK Vienna 1994. More recently work commissioned for Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Turner Contemporary, Robinson Library Armagh.
Curator of Sonic Arts concert series, UEA 1994-2012, Curator for Ultima Festival, Oslo; Fylkingen, Stockholm; SARC, Belfast; Artistic Director of Sonorities Festival Belfast 2012-18
Senior Lecturer/Director of Studios, School of Music UEA 1994-2012
Senior Lecturer SARC/Queens University Belfast 2012-present
Associate Researcher Orpheus Instituut Gent 2017-present
Visiting Fellow in Material Culture, Royal College of Music London, 2022-present
Recent improvised collaborations with Nicolas Collins, George Lewis, Jonathan Impett, Juan Parra, Matt Wright &c.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/simon-waters
Senior Lecturer, School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Maarten van Walstijn is a graduate of the Institute of Sonology in The Hague (The Netherlands). He obtained a PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2002, and was post-doctoral research assistant from 2001 to 2003.
Currently he is Senior Lecturer at the School of Electronics, Electric Engineering, and Computer Science of Queen's University Belfast.
He conducts his research at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at in the interdisciplinary field of music, audio signal processing, and acoustics, working on a variety of related topics, including physics-based sound synthesis, musical instrument acoustics, virual analog modeling, sensor interface design, room acoustics modelling, spatial audio, and audio for virtual reality.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/maarten-van-walstijn
Lara Weaver is a composer and researcher currently undertaking a PhD at SARC, under the supervision of Professor Pedro Rebelo and as the recipient of a Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Drawing upon the situational knowledges of practice research, her thesis investigates the capacity of sound to observe and give voice to changing ecosystems: specifically, the Northern Irish peatlands and the ‘singing’ sand dunes of the Rub’ al Khali desert (UAE). The new insights that these methods of sonic practice yield open dialogue between environmental humanities and sciences, interrogating the need for different situated sensings of the ‘Anthropocene’.
From these materials, Lara’s compositional practice explores different soundings of these environments. Her output includes orchestral, choral, chamber music and song, electroacoustic music and installation works. Current projects include collaborations with the Crash Ensemble (as a Crash Works Creator 2023-2025) and Hard Rain Ensemble, and recent performances include works at the BBC Proms 2023, the Electric Picnic Music and Arts Festival (Co. Laois, Ireland), Coventry City of Culture Festival (UK), and St John’s College (University of Cambridge).
Lara graduated with a First from St John’s College, Cambridge, with a BA (Hons) in Music, after which she continued to an MPhil in Musicology and Composition, which was awarded with Distinction. Previously, Lara has studied composition under Richard Causton, Christian Mason, and Tim Watts at the University of Cambridge. She was a choral scholar with St John’s Voices Choir during her five years at Cambridge, and currently sings with the Belfast Philharmonic Choir (directed by James Grossmith), regular evensong services with the Chamber Choir at the Parish of St. George (Belfast), and is a member of the experimental Hive Choir, led by John D’Arcy.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/lara-weaver
Reader, School of Psychology
My research concentrates on animal behaviour and welfare, with a particular focus on the domestic dog. Much of my work has been concerned with exploring the welfare of animals housed in captivity (e.g. zoos, rescue kennels) and finding ways of improving psychological well-being through the implementation of novel and scientifically tested enrichment strategies.
Other research areas include pets and human health, behaviour problems in companion animals and, more recently, laterality in animals.
Pure Profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/deborah-wells
Bihe Wen is a Chinese composer whose works span instrumental, electroacoustic music, and collaborative multimedia installations. He has won numerous prizes in international competitions, including Musicacoustica-Beijing competition (2011, 2017), XXVIII Luigi Russolo Contest, MÉTAMORPHOSES 2016 Acousmatic Competition, XII° Destellos Competition 2019, Shanghai International Electronic Music Competition 2020, and Denny Awards 2021.
His works have been selected for prestigious festivals and conferences worldwide, including the ISCM World New Music Days, Foro Internacional de Música Nueva "Manuel Enríquez" 2019, Swiss Contemporary Music Festival Forum Wallis (2016, 2023), and San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2023, among others. Bihe earned a bachelor's degree from the Central Conservatory of Music in China, a master's degree from the University of North Texas, was a recipient of the GREAT Scholarships from the British Council and is currently pursuing a PhD at Queen's University Belfast.
Professor, School of Arts, English and Languages
Read more Read lessI am Yang Yang, a fourth-year PhD student at SARC. I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Musicology from Yunnan Arts University in China, and later completed postgraduate studies in Music Performance at Hunan University of Science and Technology (China) and in Mmus at the University of Wolverhampton.
My experience as a pianist has drawn my attention to anxiety issues during music performance, and I am also intrigued by the impact of traditional Chinese values on Chinese people and society.
Currently, my MPA study delves into the roles of perfectionism and traditional Chinese values in MPA among Chinese university piano students, and the consequences of MPA on their performance outcomes. I am pursuing my PhD under the supervision of Dr Franziska Schroeder and Dr Matthew Rodger.