Rhythm as Knowledge: A transdisciplinary symposium

Speaker biographies

Riikka Ahokas is a researcher and freelance journalist. Her research aims to promote the accessibility, replicability and popularisation of scientific research. She is currently a Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Music, Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Jyväskylä. Her dissertation focuses on investigating the possible contributions of rhythm skills to our cognition. Her work has been supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation (2021) and the Cultural Foundation of Finland (2024). In 2022 she received an honourable mention at the KOURA Awards for her investigative journalism work focusing on the career opportunities of female and non-binary professional musicians.

Bhumika Billa is a legal academic, spoken word poet, and Kathak dancer from Delhi, India. She is a PhD student at the Faculty of Law, Cambridge Trust scholar, and Research Associate at the Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge. She reads, writes, teaches, and performs on themes of law, gender, and technology. Her creative works on page, on stage, and on film have been awarded by Button Poetry, BBC Words First, and Out-Spoken Press among others.

Debanjali Biswas is an early career researcher in theatre, performance and dance studies, and social anthropology, and a dance practitioner. Since completing her PhD from King’s College London, as a TaPRA Research Fellow at the Showtown Collections (2022-24, Blackpool), a grantee of the Women’s History Network (2023-24), Museum of Colour (2023-24, UK), and The British Academy (SRG 2023-24), she has been exploring historic collections and archives in search of Asian performers – in twentieth-century Britain, and on transnational journeys. She has edited an anthology of dance writings – Nachom (2024), and published essays in The Routledge Companion to Northeast India (2022) and South Asian Dance Intersections (2023).

Nicola Camatti is an Assistant Professor in Applied Economics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His research primarily centres on tourism business ecosystems, sustainable tourism planning, and regional development. His recent studies concentrate on the development of tourism decision support systems (DSS) and the analysis of big data for the purpose of managing and promoting tourist destinations, as well as implementing territorial marketing strategies.

Véronique Chance is an Anglo-French multi-disciplinary artist and academic with a long-term interest in the representation of the body and its relationship to performance, documentation, technology and the embodied dynamics of spectatorship, in which the activity of running plays a key part.  She studied at Manchester Polytechnic, Glasgow School of Art, the RCA, and has a PhD from Goldsmith’s College.  Based in London, she is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of the MA Fine Art course at ARU, Cambridge, where she is a member of the Fine Art Research Unit and the Arts, Health & Wellbeing, and Sustainable Futures research groups.

Robin A Chang is a Canadian researcher, instructor, and practitioner residing in Aachen (GE); she is a postdoctoral research associate and instructor at the Chair for Planning Theory and Urban Development based at the RWTH Aachen University.  Dr. Chang’s work covers temporary and tactical urbanism along with (strategic) urban planning processes and practises.  Her work is framed through a strong-process view and critical perspectives on practice and theory.  Adaptive Resilience scholarship, Complexity thinking, and Critical Future Studies inspire her research, which features temporal frameworks and time-sensitive methods.  She is a trained environmental planner with a Bachelor of Planning from the University of Northern BC and was a practising land use and community planner in Canada prior to achieving her MSc and PhD at the Faculty of Spatial Planning of TU Dortmund University.

Uma Ananda Dagnino González is a lecturer, researcher, consultant and artist. She has expertise in teaching, research and art creation in the fields and intersections of International Development, Social Sciences, Religions, Eastern Philosophies and the Arts. PhD in Arts from the University Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid, M.Phil. in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, UK and BA in International Relations from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). Her main interests are Movement Studies, Eastern Philosophies, Migrations and the Arts. She has created and collaborated with Art projects (music, singing, movement, poetry and theatre) on the topics of mysticism, the digital age, cultures and societies. She has lived and worked in India, Morocco, Europe, United Kingdom and Central and South America.

Carlo Federico dall’Omo is an Architect and Urban Planner and holds a PhD in Architecture, City, and Design from the Università Iuav di Venezia.  He is the Research Manager and Adjunct Professor in Urban Design and Sustainability at Iuav.  Carlo supports and coordinates the development of the international network and the dissemination of IUAV research results with civil society and academia. He is currently a Research Associate at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage and Urban Regeneration, European Climate Pact Ambassador and designated expert for Italy at UNFCCC.

Satinder Gill is a research affiliate at the Centre for Music and Science, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge. Her current research includes investigating the processes underlying knowledge transfer in human interaction; the role of the body in sense-making; the function of rhythm in facilitating human communication; and exploration of the dynamics of technologically-mediated interaction.  Her book, Tacit Engagement: Beyond Interaction (2015), explores how digital technology is altering the relationships between people and how the very nature of interface itself needs to be reconsidered to reflect this – how we can make sense of each other, handle ambiguities, negotiate differences, empathise and collectively make skilled judgments in our modern society.

Charissa Granger is a lecturer in cultural studies at The University of the West Indies whose work analyses Afro-Caribbean music as liberatory practices, examining music epistemologies, aesthetics, love ethics, and erotic knowledge. She is a postdoctoral researcher in the NWO-funded Island(er)s at the Helm project, collaborating on research for sustainable and inclusive solutions to climate challenges in the (Dutch) Caribbean.

Victoria Gross is a third-year DPhil student at Oxford researching memory, time and the human soul. She received her MPhil in Philosophical Theology from Oxford with distinction in 2021 and received her BA in Philosophy from Columbia University in 2019.  In an effort that unites the ancient and the modern, her dissertation offers a novel theory of memory and the soul in dialogue with contemporary neuroscience, philosophy of mind, computational theory, and theological anthropology.

Conor Heaney is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Kent Law School at the University of Kent, Canterbury, working with Dr Connal Parsley on his UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship project: ‘The Future of Good Decisions: An Evolutionary Approach to Human-AI Government Administrative Decision-Making’. Central to his work is the ongoing elaboration of new theories and practices of rhythmanalysis, authoring two monographs on this – Rhythm: New Trajectories in Law (Routledge, 2023) and Contemporary Capitalism and Mental Health: Rhythms of Everyday Life (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) – as well as a number of journal articles.

Kathryn Hughes is a Lecturer in Visual Culture at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.

Ekaterina Letunovskaia is the co-founder and Vice-President of Habidatum, an urban big data analytics company, and the founding member of Apollo Impact Compass, which measures social impact of investments in places. She is part of the international consortium ‘Designing Rhythms of Social Resilience’ Masters in Urban Studies and Planning at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam.

Helen Magowan recently submitted her PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge.  Her research considers 18th-century Japanese calligraphy and was developed under the aegis of Japanese Studies. Her work engages with interdisciplinary methods, drawing on literary studies, art history and sociolinguistics. Through her doctoral research, Helen found that she began to understand calligraphy through her embodied knowledge, especially of dance and yoga, and many years of watching professional dance. While we understand writing to be a means for transmitting certain kinds of knowledge across time and space, Helen is interested in what else the East Asian instrument of writing, the brush, might also transmit.

Sirishkumar Manji is a classical tabla maestro, composer and musical artist with a unique ability for bringing his gift for the tabla into diverse musical and creative collaborations.  He has toured worldwide and worked with a variety of musical talents and performers, spanning genres from Indian classical to pop and the avant-garde, and even played for the Pope.  His open-minded and creative approach lends him an extraordinary ability to engage with others both within and beyond music: he has even collaborated with social science work on sense-making, sound and rhythm in urban contexts.

Caroline Nevejan has been the Chief Science Officer of the city of Amsterdam since March 2017. In this role, she orchestrates research between the municipality of Amsterdam and the different scientific, academic and artistic universities in the city. With a small team, she ensures that civil servants and researchers can find each other and invent new ways of working together. Caroline is also a Professor at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam (2018-2023), and her research is focused on Designing Urban Experience.

Liz Pavey is a dance artist/researcher (improviser, choreographer, teacher), an Assistant Professor in Theatre & Performance at Northumbria University, and a previous Senior Lecturer in Dance at Wolverhampton University 1997-2004. She holds an MA The Body & Representation (Distinction), from Reading University and a BA(Hons) Dance in Society (First Class), from Surrey University which included a year at Ohio State University.  Her work is often site-specific or gallery-based and is informed by somatic movement practices and theories of embodiment. Liz has published in academic journals including The Senses and Society and Journal of Arts & Communities. She is also a Shiatsu practitioner and business coach.

Rahil Roodsaz is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, specialising in gender and sexuality studies.

Daniela Sclavo is a biologist and historian of science working on cultural understandings of crop conservation efforts and the intersections between food security and sovereignty. She specialises in women’s culinary knowledge and its connection to biocultural conservation. Daniela is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge as part of the project ‘From Collection to Cultivation’, directed by Dr Helen Anne Curry.

Pinar Sefkatli is PhD candidate as part of the Designing Rhythms for Social Resilience consortium (supervised by Prof Dr Caroline Nevejan and Dr Olga Sezneva). Her research formulates rhythm as a concept for understanding the social life in cities and for identifying design spaces for socio-spatial issues through engaging with the context of Amsterdam Zuidoost. Pinar studied architecture at Delft University of Technology (Msc 2015) and at the Polytechnic University of Milan (Bsc 2013). Before starting her PhD, she collaborated with architecture studios from Amsterdam and Rotterdam, was a research assistant at City Rhythm Research (2018) and worked for the Chief Science Office in the city of Amsterdam.

Carolyn Smith is an architect by training and an interdisciplinary researcher, writer and designer.  She is currently completing her PhD in the Department of Geography, at the University of Cambridge, and her doctoral project examines the intersection between indigeneity and the (geo)politics of volcanic risk on the border between Chile and Argentina. Carolyn’s work has always engaged with the links between collective identities, the material world, environmental change and social justice, and the practical focus of her architectural foundation has always drawn Carolyn to investigate how to reframe ‘wicked problems’ to open up new conversations.

Férdia Stone-Davis is post-doctoral researcher for the FWF project ‘The Epistemic Power of Music: On the Idea and History of Artistic Research through Music’ at the University of Music and the Performing Arts, Graz, Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity, and Bye-Fellow of Murray Edwards College.

Katherine Templar Lewis is a director of Kinda Studios, the first women-led neuroaesthetics studio and in situ lab. Kinda Studios is positioned at the intersection between art and science: translating neuroscience into felt experiences and enhancing the impact of arts and culture through science. Katherine designs digital and interactive sensory experiences to awaken new ways of connecting to the world through neuroscience. She will be running an immersive breathwork session that uses an immersive audiovisual experience that unites spatial audio, and 3D animation to energise, uplift and restore.

Lucy Thompson is a cultural and historical geographer at the University of Cambridge, with an interest in dance, mobilities and embodiment. Her PhD is titled ‘Stepping in Time and Space with Circum-Atlantic Performance: A Cultural and Historical Geography of Tap Dance’, funded by Trinity College, which explores tap dance as a non-representational rhythmic art form, related to jazz and improvisatory practices. Using historical methods, it examines tap dance’s significant circum-Atlantic, colonial historical geographies, exploring how the dancing body is inherently connected to power, intersectional politics, and corporeal resistance and agency, with a wider interest in more creative, participatory historical research methods.

Siddharth Unnithan Kumar is a mathematician with a deep affinity for interdisciplinary collaboration; he has worked closely with geographers, ecologists, anthropologists, and Indigenous scholars, among others.  Following the completion of his doctorate last year, with a thesis titled ‘Mathematical ecology in a more-than-human world’, he has recently started a post-doctorate with the University of Exeter’s Renew programme, working with ecologist Kevin Gaston to develop the role of mathematics in environmental research.  Alongside this, Siddharth is exploring what it might look like to ‘ecologise’ mathematics, with particular attention to the reciprocal relationship between inner and outer worlds of human experience.

Welmoet Wartena is a designer, researcher and educator. Her research focuses on place, written language and ecology. Through her interdisciplinary thinking, her research explores the form of the book as a means of enquiry to materialise fragments of place. Welmoet recently completed her practice-led PhD (2024) in visual communication at the Royal College of Art, London. She received the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds: Young Talent Award and Stichting de Zaaier scholarships (2017, the Netherlands). Welmoet holds an MA Visual Arts: Book Arts (2009), from Camberwell College of Arts London, UAL, UK and a BA (Hons) Design in Communication: Graphic Design (2007), from the Academy of Art Minerva, The Netherlands.

Sara Wookey asks pressing questions about the nature of human interaction that finds articulation through public sector spaces.  Her current concerns are in how practice-based research and expanded choreographic practices can help to change the human imagination of relationships in ways that can be more inclusive and sustainable in the museum and through methods of archiving, collecting and conserving arts.  Affiliates include the Tate Modern and her work is in the collection at the Van Abbemuseum.  Sara is an Affiliate Researcher at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge and has a forthcoming monologue with Bloomsbury.

Mia Wroe is an interdisciplinary researcher working across geological and social sciences. Her current PhD explores changing risk perceptions among tourists and residents in Reykjavik, Iceland, following the recent volcanic eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula. These eruptions could mark a significant shift in the ways in which these groups perceive and interact with Iceland’s volcanic landscapes, as aerosols could now pose a significant and chronic hazard to the capital.