Winnie W. C. Lai

|Research Associate
Academic Appointments

  • Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow (2024-2026)

  • Research Associate B

  • Lecturer

Winnie W. C. Lai is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Music at Dartmouth College. Her research ranges from Hong Kong protest sounds to performed vocalities in Cantopop and Sinophone pop, interspecies communication, and interpersonal interaction. Dr. Lai's cutting-edge intermedial methods integrate ethnographic materials with historical archives and engage critical theoretical frameworks. She has published in Ethnomusicology, Openwork, and Hong Kong Studies, and is the recipient of the SEM Crossroads Section's Social Justice Paper Prize (2026), the James T. Koetting Prize (2024), the SEM 21st Century Fellowship (2023), the Penn Price Lab Mellon Mid-Doctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities (2022-2023), the Penfield Research Award (2022), Tarnopol Graduate Fellowship (2020-2021), an Honorable Mention for the Charles Seeger Prize (2021), and Benjamin Franklin Fellowship (2018-2024). Broadly speaking, Dr. Lai works at the intersection of sound, auralities, and power to grapple with questions about why sound matters and how the sonic and listening are lived in everyday situations. She is completing a multimodal monograph, provisionally entitled Unsounding Hong Kong: From Protests to Silence, which theorizes the dynamics of sound in Hong Kong's urban spaces where pro-democracy protests once took place and have since disappeared, as well as the sonic and affective currents circulating through the Hong Kong diaspora and transnational protest movements.

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Personal Website

Contact

Wan.Chi.Winnie.Lai@dartmouth.edu
Sudikoff Hall, Room 106
HB 6187

Education

  • B.A. (Hons) University of Hong Kong (Music) (2013)
  • M.Phil. University of Hong Kong (Musicology) (2017)
  • Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania (Music - Ethnomusicology) (2024)

Selected Publications

  • "The Authoritarian Ear: Reorienting Political Aurality and Acoustic Citizenship in Hong Kong." Ethnomusicology 70, no. 1 (Spring 2026): 80–111. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/21567417.70.1.06

    "Sounding Freedom: Political Aurality and Sound Acts in Hong Kong (Post-)Protest Spaces." PhD. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2024. (Awarded the SEM 21st Century Fellowship 2023, The Society for Ethnomusicology.)

    "'Happy Birthday to You': Music as Nonviolent Weapon in the Umbrella Movement." Hong Kong Studies 1, no. 1 (March, 2018): 66-82. (Shortlisted as one of the eight finalist works for the IBP Best Article on Global Hong Kong Studies in Humanities 2021.)

    Please contact me for an updated CV. Thank you.