James Ace is a doctoral student in UCLA’s Department of Musicology, having previously earned a master’s degree in music history and literature from the University of Maryland, College Park (2017), and a bachelor of music degree in viola performance from Florida State University (2015). His primary research looks at American musical entertainment of the mid-late nineteenth century in resonance with contemporary cultural and scientific formations of race, sex, and gender. James is also actively involved in a project that deals with sound, phenomenological approaches to embodiment, and martial arts. He is particularly interested in historical constructions of gender, and approaches to scholarship informed by transgender perspectives. James has also worked extensively on archival projects: as an archivist in the Special Collections in Performing Arts at the University of Maryland, and as a graduate student researcher for the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music working in collaboration with Sinai Temple in Westwood.

Morgan Bates (they/them) is a musicologist, trumpeter, educator, and Cota-Robles fellow at UCLA. Morgan’s musicological research discusses constructions of identity in a wide span of musical works, from Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer to Handel’s Alcina. Their current work assesses gender play within the multifaceted genre of drag vocal performance. Morgan’s recent paper, “Vocal Transcendance: Performing and Perceiving Transgender Drag Vocal Performance,” was featured at the 2023 American Musicological Society Conference on the historic all-transgender panel centered around “transauralities.” An active performer, Morgan is a member of UCLA’s trumpet studio and the Gay Freedom Band of Los Angeles. They have held professional positions with the Rogue Valley Symphony, the Oregon Mozart Players, the Oregon Brass Quintet, and the Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble. Additionally, Morgan is a two-time winner of Dickinson College’s Concerto Competition, placed third in the chamber division of the 2023 International Trumpet Guild’s Ryan Anthony Memorial Trumpet Competition, and serves on faculty for the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) at the Heart of Los Angeles. Morgan holds dual master’s degrees in trumpet performance and musicology with a certificate in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from the University of Oregon and a bachelor’s with departmental honors in music from Dickinson College.

Racquel Bernard is a PhD Candidate in musicology as well as a singer and songwriter. She earned her bachelor’s at Dartmouth College in african and african american studies and her master’s at the University of the West Indies (Mona, Jamaica campus) in cultural studies. Her work examines how black women’s reggae allows artists to confront racism, sexism, and classism paying special attention to the voice and musical semiotics. Originally from Jamaica, she explores reggae from both inside and outside of the genre. Her own repertoire under the name “Jahmi Roc” includes reggae, dancehall, r&b and hip hop. She previously performed with NSU Modern, one of UCLA’s competitive hip hop dance teams and considers herself a movement enthusiast. Bernard also has extensive experience in admissions consulting, helping students prepare for applying to top colleges. 

Matthew Day Blackmar is a musicologist, media/information studies scholar, and classical/pop musician whose research interests center on the figure of the musical amateur, engaging contemporary digital practice, modern recording engineering and sound design, and nineteenth-century print cultures—each through the critical lens of the social construction of “intellectual property.” His research and writing have appeared (or will soon appear) in the Thurnauer Schriften zum Musiktheater, The Musicology Review, and The Journal of Musicological Research. He received the Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Fellowship and the Ingolf Dahl Award from the American Musicological Society. Prior to graduate study, Matthew performed as a DJ and contributed keyboards, programming, and string arrangements to indie pop, hip-hop, and heavy-metal recordings in Los Angeles.

Xavier Viktor Brown (he/him/his) is from rural Maryland—a stone’s throw from the Appalachian trail and the Civil War Battlefields that got him interested in history. Xavier earned a BA in Music at the University of Chicago and a Master’s degree in Composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Xavier is a 4th year in the PhD program at UCLA and in addition to studying with his adviser, Mitchell Morris, has earned his Master’s degree in Musicology and is currently preparing to take his Special Fields exam on queer and trans studies, Jewish studies, and Schoenberg studies in the Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Xavier is also working with Jessica Schwartz on a voice studies project featuring oral histories he took within trans community. In his spare time, Xavier goes birdwatching either by himself or with his friends and has a current life list (North American) bird count of 150 birds!

Kerry Brunson is a doctoral student in UCLA’s Department of Musicology. She received a bachelor of music in saxophone performance from Kennesaw State University (2009) and a master’s in musicology from California State University, Long Beach (2016). Her research centers on classical music institutions, urbanization, and regional politics in the US South with a focus on post-war Atlanta. She has presented her work at conferences in the United States and Europe, including for the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and Music and the Moving Image. She is currently serving as editor-in-chief for ECHO: A Music-Centered Journal and was co-coordinator for the department’s 2017-18 Distinguished Lecture Series.

Additionally, Kerry is a docent for grades K-12 at the Getty Center in Los Angeles where she crafts and leads interactive musical tours of the museum’s galleries. She is also an active musician who enjoys singing and playing the oboe, English horn, and saxophone with an eclectic mix of local bands and orchestras.

Wade F. Dean is a Eugene V. Cota Robles Fellow and doctoral candidate in the Department of Musicology at UCLA. His work explores the interplay between Black vernacular music, popular and socio-political culture. Dean is completing a dissertation that analyzes mid-twentieth century live soul performances and their role in realizing, describing, and enacting alternative socio-political formations and futures within Black life.

Erin Fitzpatrick (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in musicology at UCLA, as well as a songwriter, recording artist, and producer. Her research takes an interdisciplinary, autoethnographic approach to the question of how queer rock and pop musicians make innovative use of musical technologies to convey their unique subjectivities. Her fascination with the interplay between bodies, technologies, and queerness directly inflects her incisive songwriting and cyborgic production. Erin’s work invites others to share in the pleasures of sensory experience, refuse hegemonic notions of virtuosity and canon-building, and imagine alternatives wherever possible.

Ramona Gonzalez is a musician, Ph.D. candidate, and Assistant Professor of Music at Occidental College. Her forthcoming dissertation, Why Sad Song?: Women’s Laments in Popular Music, aims to revitalize the study of women’s lament—a musical expression central not only to the historical processing of grief, but also to female creativity. As recording artist Nite Jewel, Ramona has released five studio albums, for which she has received accolades from outlets such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, NPR, and The Guardian.

Candace Hansen is a PhD candidate, drummer, educator, scholar, artist, and event producer currently studying and teaching at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and the UCLA Department of Gender Studies, writing for LA Times and Spin, and drumming for Alice Bag, dimber, Reckoner, and the Josie Wreck Noise Ensemble.
Hansen is passionate about accessible and equitable pedagogy and has developed and taught courses about queer punk as a method, on contemporary LGBTQ+ literature, lesbian and trans narratives and critiques in film and television, and about the history of underground queer art, music, and performance in the US from William Dorsey Swann to Homocore. Hansen holds an Associate’s degree in Women’s Studies from Santa Ana College, dual Bachelor’s degrees in History and Gender Studies from UCLA, and a Masters of Art in Musicology from UCLA, As a former community organizer, Hansen has organized events at UCLA for the Center for Musical Humanities such as Curating Resistance: Punk as Archival Method conference and the lecture series Hear/Now/Then/There: Subversion, Sound, and the Queer Underground.
Freelance journalism is a political act for Hansen, who started writing about the bands and artists they loved that other writers wouldn’t cover, often linking them to larger histories and political issues. Since covering amazing local acts and events like Chulita Vinyl Club, The Bellhaunts, Transgress Fest as a freelance writer at publications such as Tom Tom Magazine, OC Weekly, and Razorcake, they have also had the opportunity to share the stories about icons like Tig Notaro, Elvira Mistress of the Dark, Tegan Quinn, Bytch Nastee, Josie Wreck, BenDeLaCreme, Sherry Vine, Jackie Beat, Pony Lee, Amina Cruz, Daniel Sea, Maebe A Girl, RuPaul’s Drag Con, The L Word, Sister Spit, and many others for LA Times and Spin. Arts journalism is a way to contribute to the record of queer history and push conversations forward for Hansen, always routed through critical care.
Hansen is an active drummer, zinester, and member of the Los Angeles queer punk creative community. Hansen loves to collaborate, record and perform, and has been an active artist and studio and live drummer and musician since they were a teen. Currently, Hansen plays with bands like dimber, Fatty Cakes and the Puff Pastries, Jennie Cotterill, and Josie Wreck, as well as with punk legend Alice Bag; having recorded on her solo records Alice Bag, Blueprint, and Sister Dynamite, and performing in her band since 2016. Hansen’s poetry and vocal collaboration with HIRS and Alice Bag titled “Always Surviving” appeared in the FX television show Mayans.
As a co-director at the Rock n Roll Camp for Girls Orange County, Hansen ran a not-for-profit organization that worked to empower girls and gender expansive youth through music and education from 2012-2019. Currently they produce Butch Bech Presents, a queer and trans focused pop-up music and performance art event at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach. They emcee for the Gay Freedom Band Los Angeles, delivering program notes about LGBTQ classical music in ways that anyone can understand and get excited about. They self-release zines and prints, and have been a part of installations, readings, panels, talks, trainings, and workshops for organizations like Queer and Trans Poetry Night, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, LA Public Library Octavia Lab, Philosophical Research Society, Heavy Manners Library, and LA Zine Fest.
Inspired by scholars like Sara Ahmed and Jose Muñoz, Hansen is interested in the affective elements of queer music that hold those blueprints, that transmit and transmute through feeling, invoking the not-yet-conscious while embodying maps to queer futures. Hansen’s work bridges musicology, gender studies, LGBTQ studies, history, media studies, and performance studies. Hansen’s dissertation focuses on dissonant drumming and queer and trans punk as an act of critical becoming through feeling. They are interested in how queer punk music embodies queer time and hails listeners through it, creating spaces for transformation, connection, critique, and hope at multiple scales.
Hansen has received the James and Sylvia Thayer Library Special Collections Research Fellowship, Center the Study of Women / Streisand Center Travel Grant, UCLA Musicology Best Teacher Award 2022, The Carolyn D Smith Graduate Scholarship, and is a Cota Robles Scholar.

Kate Hamori (she/her) is a first year PhD student in musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds master’s degrees in musicology and library science from Indiana University Bloomington. Her recent musicological work has focused on intersections of cultural trauma, girlhood, and sonic violence as mediated by popular music and sound on social media platforms. Kate’s interests in music librarianship include ethical cataloging practices, library instruction, information literacy, and social media outreach. In addition to her studies, Kate works as a library student research assistant for the UCLA music library. A pianist and soprano, Kate is an active choral singer and enjoys accompanying the occasional high school musical whenever the opportunity presents itself. In her spare time, Kate enjoys editing Wikipedia and hanging out with her two cats, Hildegard and Igor.

Emmie Head (she/her) is a PhD student in UCLA’s Department of Musicology. She holds a B.A. in music from St. Olaf College and an M.A. in musicology from UCLA. Emmie’s recent academic work has focused on the ways in which intellectual property policy and developing music technologies like AI challenge and complicate conceptions of musical ownership. She is especially interested in the practical implications of intellectual property policy and its effects on music makers who are disadvantaged by the law in a myriad of ways. In addition to her work as a musicologist, Emmie teaches flute lessons on a volunteer basis to increase access to quality instrumental music education for those who are underserved in classical music communities. When not musicking, Emmie can be found baking pastries for her big Greek family or hanging with her miniature dachshunds Mr. Peabody, Dobby, and Fig Newton.

Natalie R. Hedberg is a Musicology PhD student at UCLA studying K-pop and girlies. Natalie is an interdisciplinary scholar, having earned her BA in Advertising and Graphic Design from Western Kentucky University (2019) and her MA in Communication Studies from the University of Alabama (2024). Beyond K-pop, she researches pop music, music fandoms, and collecting, seeking to illuminate girlie perspectives in music.

Molly Hennig (she/her) is a second-year doctoral student of the Department of Musicology at UCLA. She received her master of arts degree in historical musicology with an area of specialty in voice under the Leland Coon Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She also holds a bachelor of music degree in both vocal performance and music industry from the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh. Molly’s current interests include aesthetic tropes and listening scenarios in gaming and play, ethnographic sound studies in online livestreaming, music and sound in educational entertainment, and perceptions of embodiment in animation and voice acting. She is currently involved in the Ludomusicology Interest Group at the American Musicological Society, and she has presented her work at the Society of Ethnomusicology 2024 Annual Meeting, the 2024 European Conference on Video Game Music and Sound, the 2024 North American Conference on Video Game Music, the 2023 Music & The Internet Conference at the University of Chicago, and the 2022 Midwest Graduate Music Consortium. Alongside her scholarship, Molly performs soprano voice and composes with a focus on contemporary art song and chamber music, her work having premiered at the 2021 Source Song Festival, the 2022 Minneapolis “songSLAM” with Sparks & Wiry Cries, and the 2022 Composer Mentorship Program under the National Association of Teachers of Singing and Cincinnati Song Initiative.

Jordan Hugh Sam (he/him) is a Ph.D. student in Musicology at UCLA, having previously earned a M.M. degree in Choral Conducting (CU Boulder), and a BA degree in Music (Amherst College). His primary research focuses on choral singing at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and employs techniques from linguistic anthropology and sensory ethnography to study the organization of feeling, intercorporeality, and racial identity in group singing. He is particularly interested in methodological approaches uniting creative practice and academic scholarship and explores those interests as a researcher with the UCLA Peer Lab. He is also actively involved in projects that apply queer frameworks to the study of early music and video game music. Forthcoming publications include a co-authored article on post-colonial listening practices in Pikmin 3 and a book chapter on sonic affordances for queer play in FFXV. Additionally, Jordan maintains an active interest in pedagogy, serving as the Teaching Assistant Coordinator for Writing II in UCLA’s Writing Program. He also has an active career as a collaborative pianist, choir director, and music teacher.

Kristy Martinez (she/her/they) is a PhD Candidate in musicology as well as a vocalist and archivist. She earned her bachelor’s in history with a minor in religion, her master’s in American Indian Studies and in musicology at UCLA. Her work examines subcultural movements in the San Gabriel Valley as well as ephemera, nostalgia, placemaking, music analysis, and identity with a focus on punk, post-punk, heavy metal, and emo. Her family is from Sonora, Mexico, and she has grown up in the San Gabriel Valley area. She has also created a D.I.Y. digital archive “Indigenous Punx Archive” to document punk in the Southwest with flyers, photos, videos, and information on bands. This archive has been included in the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada and the Denver Art Museum. Her work will be included in the forthcoming volume Sovereign Aesthetics (2024). Kristy enjoys attending rock shows and concerts, spending time with her family, and her pet tabby Rigby.

Alexander Moore is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Musicology at UCLA. He previously earned his Bachelor of Arts in English, with a minor in music history, at UCLA, where he also received his Master of Arts in musicology. His current research critically analyzes and interprets metaphors found in the lyrics and sounds of hip-hop music, more specifically on how mythologies of the music and culture of hip-hop incorporate, correspond, and engage with the cultural memory and creative imagination of Afrofuturism. Alex’s research has been presented at the annual conferences for the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and Music and the Moving Image. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he has previously worked in non-profit music education (as a double bassist) and the entertainment industry.

Damjan Rakonjac earned two PhDs from UCLA: one in Musicology (2023) and a second in French & Francophone Studies (2024). Damjan is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Houston, Moores School of Music. Positioned at the intersection of musicology, area studies, (post)colonial studies, gender studies, and critical media studies, Damjan’s work crosses disciplinary, methodological, and cultural borders in order to decenter and recontextualize Eurocentric models of music history.

Damjan’s growing publications portfolio reflects the variety of his research and teaching interests, including 19th-century French music, French-Vietnamese musical transculturation, music in film, and global pop. His chapter in The Oxford Handbook of the Television Musical, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, considers the convergence of music, television, and masculinity in The Kinks’ 1974 rock musical, Starmaker. A second article, forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press, is slated to be published in the first ever edited volume dedicated to the films of Trịnh Thị Minh-hà. A third article, “Ca Trù in its Time: Gender, Postcoloniality, and Music in Việt Linh’s Mê Thảo Thời Vang Bóng,” is under contract for an edited volume in collaboration with scholars in Vietnam. Damjan has conducted funded research at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris, as well as the Vietnam National Library, Hanoi – the latter as part of Jann Pasler’s European Research Council project, The Sound of Empire in 20th-c. Colonial Cultures. Damjan is currently working on a book-length project focused on musical transculturation in northern Vietnam during the French colonial period, titled Resounding the Metropole: Musical Encounters in Colonial Tonkin (1883 – 1940).

As a passionate and committed educator, Damjan has garnered a decade of experience teaching music history courses at the university level, including six years as instructor of record. Having taught across a range of institutions – including UCLA, the University of Houston, Chapman University, and Mt. San Antonio College – Damjan has developed skills to work with, and meet the needs of, a variety of students. At the University of Houston, Moores School of Music, Damjan teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses, and serves on doctoral committees. Damjan has taught courses on a variety of musical genres, including European art music, world music, jazz, rock’n’roll, punk, LGBTQ pop, electronic dance music, and film music. Beyond content courses, he served as Teaching Fellow for the upper-division undergraduate course Writing About Music at UCLA and teaches the Introduction to Research Methods in Musicology graduate seminar at the University of Houston.

Lily Shababi (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Musicology at UCLA. She received a master’s degree in musicology from UCLA and a bachelor’s degree in violin performance and music composition from Cornish College of the Arts. Her research examines vocal processing practices that are cultivated by hyperpop musicians. Situating an ethnographic study of queer and trans electronic pop music subcultures amongst trans studies and
technology studies frameworks, Lily traces an alternate genealogy of electronic music. Studying the cultural histories and musical practices associated with technologies such as music
software, electronic instruments, and artificial intelligence vocal models, she illustrates how technology can be harnessed as a tool for transgressive experiences of gender and selfhood. Lily has presented her work at the American Musicological Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology, Pop Con, and the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society, where she received the Ingolf Dahl Award in May 2023. Lily is also a performer, composer, and instructor of experimental electroacoustic music.

Danielle Stein is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she has co-coordinated the Musicology Distinguished Lecture Series and served as Managing Editor of ECHO: A Music Centered Journal. She holds a M.A. in Musicology from UCLA, a M.M. in Voice Performance and Opera Studies from California State University Northridge, and a B.M. in Voice Performance and Education from San Diego State University. Her primary research examines World War II propaganda music, the covert musical operations of the Office of Strategic Services and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the development of weaponized music and sonic environments over the 20th and 21st centuries. Courses taught at UCLA include Music and Politics, Music as Political Instrument in the Sixties, Film and Music; courses assisted have included Popular Jewish and Israeli Music. Danielle has presented papers at the national conferences for the American Musicological Society, Society for American Music, and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, as well as at the Wagner 1900 Conference at the University of Oxford and the Transnational Opera Studies Conference at the University of Bern. She is the recipient of the American Musicological Society’s Ingolf Dahl Memorial award in musicology for her paper “The Office of Strategic Services Musac Project: ‘Lili Marleen,’ Marlene Dietrich, and the Propaganda Music of WWII,” and her research has received support from the Milken Foundation for Jewish Music, the Ciro Zoppo Research Fellowship, the UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship Program, and the University of California Del Amo Fellowship. Also a soprano, former USO performer, and an avid community arts producer, Danielle maintains a private voice studio in Hollywood and serves as the Assistant Artistic Director and Vice President of the Celestial Opera Company, is a co-founder of the California Music Collective, and serves on the board of the Émigré Composers Orchestra.

Born and raised in Southern California, Michele Yamamoto (she/her) is both a musicology scholar and a human-focused administrator within mission-driven organizations. Her research interests include the role of popular music in the development of self-identity, cultural identity, and other conceptual social frameworks. She is especially interested in arts justice and the way music and sounds enter and evolve within marginalized communities. Other research interests include politics, human geography, music and space/place, and sound studies. She holds an MA in musicology from California State University, Long Beach (2022) and a BA in Music History from UCLA (2009).