PhD in Music - Ethnomusicology in Philadelphia United States | University of Pennsylvania

The department's faculty excels in African/a Studies, the Americas, the Caribbean, and South and Southeast Asia, with a focus on musical traditions across the Global South and exploring music histories tied to islands, oceans, and waterways. Key research themes encompass music's relationship with ethics and spirituality, sound studies and ecomusicology, trauma in music, race, ethnicity, and colonialism, postcolonial scholarship, and decolonial approaches. While contributing to these broad fields, faculty members also pursue specialized research. For example, Muller publishes widely on gender studies and applied ethnomusicology in South Africa and the U.S., while also examining trauma studies. Rommen investigates music's connection to tourism and Caribbean musical decolonization projects, and Sykes analyzes war, capitalism, urban growth, and ontological distinctions in Sri Lanka and Singapore.