Prof. Dr. Juniper Hill
Professor and Chair of Ethnomusicology
Tel. +49 931 31-82952
BIOGRAPHY
Juniper Hill is an Ethnomusicologist, who joined the Würzburg Institute of Music Research in 2008. Originally from California, she holds a B.A. with High Honors in Music and Latin American Studies from Wesleyan University (1998), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles (2001, 2005). She is a Henriette Herz Scout of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the recipient of a Volkswagen Foundation grant, a Marie Curie Intra-European Research Fellowship, two Fulbright Fellowships, an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship, and a University of California Faculty Fellowship, among others. She has held teaching positions at the University College Cork (2009-2017), the University of California (2005-2007) and Pomona College (2006), as well as research affiliations with the University of Cambridge (2012-2016), the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (2012-2014), the University of Cape Town (2011-2014), the Sibelius Academy (2002-2013), the University of Bamberg (2007-2008), and the University of San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador (1999-1997).
Research Interests
- Migration and intercultural engagement
- Creative agency, creative development, improvisation, and performance practice
- Music revival and cultural sustainability
- Pedagogy, musician training, and institutionalization
- Applied Ethnomusicology and Community Music
Prof. Hill’s current research focuses on the diversity of heritage music practices in Germany, including by musicians with migration background and local Franconian folk musicians. She is exploring how immigrants and new Germans creatively maintain and adapt their musical traditions in new settings, how Franconian musicians respond to cultural change, and how community music may be used to increase intercultural engagement and empathy. Her recent project, “Learning from Ethnomusicology and Our Neighbors: Musical Heritage, Creativity, and Intercultural Engagement,” was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation and used community-participatory action research methods to collaborate with diverse local musicians and generate learning materials for the public. See her documentary film Music of Our Neighbors and interactive companion learning materials here.
In previous research projects, Prof. Hill has conducted extensive cross-cultural and cross-idiomatic research on creative agency. She examined how multiple cultural and sociopolitical factors – including postcolonial and economic inequalities, cultural beliefs and values, and formal and informal learning methods – shape the extent to which musicians acquire or fail to acquire the capacity, motivation, and authority to be creative. She has also studied the transnational power dynamics at play in intercultural musical appropriations and fusions, as well as how music revivals selectively engage and reimagine the past in order to serve contemporary cultural and political agendas. On these topics she has conducted fieldwork in South Africa, Finland, the United States, and Ecuador. Her books include the monograph Becoming Creative: Insights from Musicians in a Diverse World and the co-edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival (with Prof. Caroline Bithell). She has also published essays in the journals Ethnomusicology, Revue de Musicologie, Ethnomusicology Forum, Musiikin Suunta, Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology, and Yearbook for Traditional Music and in numerous edited volumes, including Musical Imaginations: Multidisciplinary perspectives on creativity, performance and perception, Musicians in the Making: Pathways to Creative Performance, and The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical and Qualitative Assessment in Music Education, among others. Her doctoral dissertation From Ancient to Avant-Garde to Global: Creative Processes and Institutionalization in Finnish Contemporary Folk Music is available here.
Teaching repertoire
- Theorizing Music and Culture; Theorizing Music as Social Process; History and Theory of Ethnomusicology
- Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Methods; Field Research
- Advanced Research Seminar in Ethnomusicology
- Music in Culture and Society
- Developing Creativity in Music
- Improvisation in Cross-Cultural Perspective
- Gender and Sexuality in Traditional and Popular Musics
- Introduction to World Music; Introduction to Non-European Art Musics
- Power, Politics, and Identity in South African Music; Narratives of South African Music
- Latin American Music
- Finnish Music from Ancient to Avant-Garde; Finnish Folk Music
- Musical Heritages and Social Dynamics in the United States; American Folk Music
- American shape note singing (listen to the community singing formed by Hill’s former students at the Cork Sacred Harp Singers’ YouTube channel)
- Andean music and dance ensembles
- Creatively Courageous, an improvisation-based performance laboratory
Advising
Postdoctorals mentees
Dr. Clara Wenz, Junior Fellow of the Bavarian Academy of Science. Project: Egypt’s Dancing Horses: A Musical-Equestrian Ethnography.
Dr. Cornelia Günauer, Volkswagen Foundation Fellow. Project: Learning from Ethnomusicology and Our Neighbors: Musical Heritage, Creativity, and Intercultural Engagement.
Dr. Alma Bejtullahu, Humboldt Research Fellow. Project: ‘Becoming good citizens of the country we live in’: Musial practice of Albanian Kosovan Community in Germany
Dr. Loab Hammoud, Humboldt Research Fellow. Project: Reconstructing Home through Music: The Experiences of Syrian Musicians in Germany.
Dr. Toyin Samuel Ajose, Humboldt Research Fellow. Project: ‘Silenced yet Loud’: Hearing Nigerian Music through Migrant Churches in Germany.
Doctoral students
Fabio Dick, dissertation: Musik und Heimat im glokalen Kontext: Beispiele aus (Ost-)Bayern.
Ebru Yazici, dissertation: Navigating Sound: The Art of Improvisation.
Mehdi Bagheri, dissertation: Kurdish Musicians in diaspora, belonging, and community.
Peeyush Nepal, dissertation: Intercultural music making: Metamorphosis of friendships from Ethno Camps.
Jehoshaphat “Kofi” Sarbah, dissertation: Twiwee Fishing as Decision Infrastructure: Affective Physicality, Coordination, and Sustainability in Ghana's Artisanal Fisheries.
