About
I am an ethnomusicologist who is researching Gaelic songs of Nova Scotia, vernacular dance of Cape Breton, and disaster songs of Atlantic Canada. I am interested in the intersections between language and music, and in issues of memory and memorialization. I am the general editor of MUSICultures, Canada’s ethnomusicology and popular music journal. I am a fluent Gaelic learner, a classical flutist, and a beginner fiddler. Projects
My current major research involves documenting Gaelic songs in Nova Scotia in a database and digitizing a selection of those songs for inclusion in a Gaelic language corpus. See more at the
Language in Lyrics project website.
I have also been documenting Atlantic Canadian disaster songs for years, and have discovered that these are still being created in large numbers. This is definitely a contemporary tradition! See more at my
Disaster Songs project website.
