Birgit Abels is professor of cultural musicology at Georg-August-University Göttingen. Her research interests include neo-phenomenological and Pacific Indigenous approaches to the performing arts as well as music-making as an epistemological practice. The geographic foci of her research are the Pacific Ocean (particularly Micronesia), North India, and the Southeast Asian Island world. Her books include Sounds of Articulating Identity. Tradition and Transition in the Music of Palau, Micronesia (2008), which was recognized with the ICAS Book Prize (PhD) 2009, The Harmonium in North Indian Music (2010), and Music Worlding in Palau. Chanting, Atmospheres, and Meaningfulness (2022).
Andrew Gumataotao is a CHamoru from the village of Hagåtña in Guåhan (Guam). He is a former East-West Fellow and MA graduate student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Prior to graduate school, he was teaching CHamoru language, culture and music in the Guam Public School System. He has taught at Guam’s CHamoru Immersion School, Hurao Academy and received his undergraduate education at the University of Guam in Music and CHamoru Studies.
His research and career goals include CHamoru identity and its many articulations via music, cultural heritage and its intersection with social movements for indigenous rights. Andrew has been involved in many community-based projects on Guam. His most current project entitled, Tåhdong Marianas is one in which he along with a group of young scholars, activists, filmmakers and artist have been collecting the stories of musicians and cultural practitioners across the Marianas archipelago.
Ashley Meredith is a cultural anthropologist based in the Federated States of Micronesia. She works closely with the FSM National Government in unison with the State Historic Preservation Offices. Together, they integrate local culture with conservation and climate adaptation planning, development, and emergency preparedness for the country’s heritage resources. She’s designed and implemented a number of ethnographic surveys, including traditional routes, socio-political organization, subsistence, funerals and burial practices, ethnozoology, and economic planning and development. Her research interests include sound knowledge as it pertains to epistemology, ethnometeorology, heritage management and conservation, and ethics and field methodologies. She graduated from University of Alaska Fairbanks with an MA in Anthropology and specialized in applied anthropology. Prior to Alaska, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of Hawai’i in Hilo and a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Mercer University. Within the SoundKnowledge project, Ashley is conducting research about music and climate change in the FSM in collaborationwith the Kosrae State Historic Preservation Office.
Benjamin Duester is a cultural sociologist. He received his PhD from Griffith University in 2021 and subsequently worked as a resident adjunct at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research examining the significance of music’s materiality in the digital age, DIY music cultures and the political ecology of music. His monograph entitled Cassette Tape: The Hybrid Format in the Digital Age, based on data gathered during extensive fieldwork in Australia, Japan and the USA,is forthcoming with Bloomsbury. As part of the SoundKnowledge research team, Ben investigates how colonial trauma and the aftermath of nuclear bomb tests on the Marshall Islands are processed through music.
