Mission Statement

The Multispecies Sound and Movement Study Group suggests that the voices of other-than-human beings, as well as the vibrational ecologies of our lived environments, might find greater inclusion in our academic, artistic, and performance research as well as in our social lives as planetary kin. We emphasise the potential for music and dance studies to challenge human beings’s allegedly privileged position as listeners and sound-organisers. We intend to overcome anthropocentric commitments and reflect on issues related to ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism, and speciesism in our knowledge frameworks.

In a time of multiple environmental crises, the Study Group aims to understand how emergent problems might be addressed by interdisciplinary researchers and artists working in the more broadly conceived areas of multispecies sound and movement. In particular, we suggest that attuning ourselves and our work more conscientiously with other-than-humans life worlds enacts a critical practice of care and empathic inter-being on planet Earth. Areas of shared interest in our Study Group would include: non-human animals and their vibrational worlds; sensing and communicating across species boundaries; interactive sound and movement practices involving humans and non-humans; questions of applied ethnomusicology including activism and pedagogy; engaging critically with worldview (or world-sense) in our knowledge frameworks; environmental sustainability and ethics, as well as political ecologies of music, sound, and embodied interaction more broadly conceived.

To become a member of the Multispecies Sound and Movement Study Group, please fill in the form at this link

For any enquiry, please contact us at the following email address: mitra.Jahandideh@anu.edu.au

Executive Committee

• Dr. Lisa Herrmann-Fertig (Nuremberg University of Music; Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)

• Dr. Robert O. Beahrs (Center for Advanced Studies in Music, Istanbul Technical University) 

• Mitra Jahandideh (Australian National University)

• Dr. Christian Ferlaino (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Università della Calabria)