Gascia Ouzounian
principal investigator
Gascia is Associate Professor of Music at Oxford, co-director of the research network Recomposing the City, and PI on SONCITIES. Her work is concerned with the philosophies, technologies, and aesthetic ideologies that shape ideas of sound and space, within and across such fields as music, sound art, psychology, engineering, and urban design. She is the author of Stereophonica.
Contact: gascia.ouzounian[at]music.ox.ac.uk
Diana Rodriguez-Pérez
project support coordinator
Diana is part of the Research Facilitation team at Oxford and provides administrative, HR, and finance support to the SONCITIES team. Besides this job, Diana is also a Research Assistant at the Faculty of Classics and has published extensively on various aspects of the art and archaeology of ancient Greece.
Contact: soncities[at]music.ox.ac.uk
Lisa Hall
DPhil student
Lisa is a DPhil student with SONCITIES, based in the Music Department at Oxford and at St Catherine’s College. Lisa’s research draws on sound arts practice, as both source and method of investigation, focusing on the social and participatory practices of lived urban sonic experience. This research investigates artistic knowledge of urban spaces as a contribution to the discourse of urban sonic / noise management. Lisa’s practice-based research and collaborative artistic projects inform this DPhil.
Contact: lisa.hall[at]music.ox.ac.uk
Ruth Bernatek
research fellow (2020-2023)
Ruth Bernatek is an architectural and urban historian and theorist. Her research explores sound in the built environment, with a particular focus on audiovisual spaces (digital and physical) since 1950. In her academic and curatorial projects, Ruth uses interdisciplinary modes of writing, model-making, film, and exhibition to engage critically and creatively with sound archives, sites and their histories.
Matilde Meireles
research fellow (2020-2024)
Matilde is a recordist, sound artist, and researcher who makes use of field recordings to compose site-oriented projects. Her projects often have a multi-sensorial and holistic approach to ‘site’ which draws from her studies and experience in areas such as field-recording, site-specific visual arts and design.
Christabel Stirling
research fellow (2020-2022)
Christabel is a musicologist specialising in ethnographic approaches to contemporary music and sound art. Her research explores the social relations and coalitions that music and sound produce in their live forms, focusing particularly on the potential for such coalitions to transform or reinforce dominant social and spatial orders. She also DJs with Tanum sound system.
RESEARCH COLLABORATORS
Howayda Al-Harithy
American University of Beirut
Howayda Al-Harithy is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture and Design (ArD) at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Al-Harithy’s research focuses on urban heritage and contemporary interventions in historic cities. Her research is focused on urban heritage, identity building and post-war reconstruction in the Arab world.
Sarah Lappin
Queen’s University Belfast
Sarah A. Lappin is Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Head of Architecture at Queen’s University Belfast. She is co-founder of the All-Ireland Architectural Research Group and co-director of Recomposing the City. Her research is focused on architecture and identity, particularly on the island Ireland, and on the intersections of sound, art, architecture, and urbanism.
Signe Lidén
Oslo
Signe Lidén is an artist based in Oslo. Her work explores relations between place, sensing and sound. Through field recording, instrument-building and conversations, she approaches place as a dynamic becoming produced by geological, biological and atmospheric processes, as well as social and economic relations. Her work spans sound installations, video and performance to more documentary forms such as sound essays and archives.
Nathalie Harb
Beirut and Paris
Nathalie Harb is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. She creates public interventions, installations and set design that question the notions of home, shelter and agency by proposing an alternative use of our daily habitat. Nathalie’s project Silent Room (Versions 1-4) are a series of urban typologies that reimagine the city through listening.
Melissa Van Drie
Copenhagen
Melissa Van Drie is a researcher, project maker, musician, and performer. She works across the disciplines of theatre, music, and the history of science and technology to write cultural histories of sound and listening. Her “Sounds Delicious” project explores what a sonic perspective reveals about the human and non-human relationships that make up food.
Samuel Perea-Díaz
Berlin
Samuel Perea-Díaz is a cross-disciplinary artist, researcher, and spatial designer. As an artist, Samuel focuses especially on sound and archival practices, exploring how sonic activism and aural architecture can impact listening. He has created site-specific installations and sound-focused objects that deal with sonification, sound relocation, field recording, and virtual reality.
John Bingham-Hall
Theatrum Mundi
John Bingham-Hall is Director of Theatrum Mundi and an independent researcher interested in performances, infrastructures, and technologies of shared life in the city. With a background in music (Goldsmiths) and architectural theory (UCL Bartlett), he works across artistic, spatial and critical humanities to question and participate in the making of the urban public sphere.
Nicole L’Huillier
Berlin
Nicole L’Huillier is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher from Santiago, Chile. Her practice centers on exploring sounds and vibrations as construction materials to delve into questions of agency, identity, collectivity, and the activation of a vibrational imagination. Her work materializes through installations, sonic/vibrational sculptures, performances, compositions, poems, and writing.
Jan St. Werner
Berlin
Jan St. Werner is a Berlin-based electronic music artist and composer. Widely known as one half of the electronic music group Mouse on Mars, Werner always seeks a dialogue with the visual arts in his sound works. Werner’s work has been realized at the Venice Biennale 2024, Kunsthalle Baden Baden, ICA London, documenta 14, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and Kunstbau Lenbachhaus, among others.
ADVISORY BOARD
Karin Bijsterveld
Professor of Science, Technology & Modern Culture, Maastricht
Colin Ripley
Professor of Architectural Science, Ryerson University
Atau Tanaka
Professor of Media Computing at Goldsmiths
Georgina Born
Professor of Music and Anthropology, University of Oxford
Eric Lewis
Assc. Prof. of Philosophy, Dir. of Laboratory of Urban Culture, McGill
Richard Sennett
Chair, Urban Initiatives Group - UN Habitat // Chair, Theatrum Mundi
Christos Carras
Executive Director of the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens
Carsten Seiffarth
Founder and artistic director, singuhr – hoergalerie // Artistic director, bonn hoeren
Mendi Obadike
Associate Professor of Media Studies, Pratt Institute