Winnie W. C. Lai

|Research Associate
Academic Appointments
  • Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow (2024-2026)

  • Research Associate B

  • Lecturer

I am a(n) (ethno)musicologist, multimodal artist and returning singer-songwriter working as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Music (2024–2026) at Dartmouth. My scholarly work crosses disciplinary and methodological boundaries by integrating ethnographic materials with historical archives and employing critical theoretical tools and cutting-edge intermedial methods. Broadly speaking, I avidly study the intersection of sound, auralities, and power to grapple with issues about why sound matters and how the sonic/listening being lives in situations of the everyday. At Dartmouth, I am developing my first monograph (provisionally entitled Unsounding Hong Kong: From Protests to Silence) to study the dynamics of sound in Hong Kong's urban spaces where protests happened and have now disappeared, and the sonic and affective currents circulating through the Hong Kong diaspora and transnational protests. I am also working on two new projects: (1) the multimodal/intermedial methodological endeavor in music studies; (2) an (auto)ethnography and theorization of racialized listening and the interculturality of R&B and soul ad-libs in Sinophone pop and Hong Kong Cantopop.

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Contact

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

  • "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.