Harris Berger



Canada Research Chair in Ethnomusicology

Tier 1 - 2017-11-01
Renewed: 2023-08-01
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

709-864-3701
harris.berger@mun.ca

Coming to Canada From


Texas A&M University, College Station, United States

Research involves


Understanding the nature of musical experience through ethnographic research and philosophy.

Research relevance


This research will provide new insights into the nature of musical experience and its relationship to society and culture.

Research summary


What is the nature of musical experience and how are musical experiences connected to other parts of culture and society? These are the questions that ethnomusicology—the study of music in its cultural context—aims to address. Dr. Harris Berger is shedding new light on the nature of musical experience (the phenomenology of music) and using information from field studies to discover new ideas about the nature of music, the aesthetics of performance, and the political meaning of culture.

As Canada Research Chair in Ethnomusicology, he is co-authoring a monograph on phenomenological ethnomusicology, producing two conferences on the phenomenology of music (which will lead to edited books), and pursuing a new publication series. He and his research team are also exploring the applied ethnomusicology of Newfoundland and Labrador in order to create two online archives of traditional music, a CD series, and live events that showcase the music of the province and its region.