My ethnographic research focuses on the music of the Minangkabau people in West Sumatra, Indonesia in relation to issues of ethnicity, gender, Islam, and natural disasters. My book, Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia (Ohio University Press, 2015), investigates the ways Minangkabau people use radically different sounding gong ensembles to negotiate community, ethnicity, and their place in the world. My work has also appeared in Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, collected volumes on Indonesia, including at the Smithsonian Institution, and ASIANetwork Exchange (see Articles & Chapters). I regularly present at international and national conferences.
Recently, I have explored the Digital Humanities as part of my commitment to the creation and dissemination of more public-facing, collaborative, and accessible forms of knowledge. Song in the Sumatran Highlands is my digital humanities project that is book-length in scope, but presented in an innovative and creative new non-linear, multimedia format.
