Music - Ethnomusicology (MA)

Ethnomusicology embraces music from around the world, old and new, professional and amateur, sacred and profane, traditional and newly invented. A dynamic discipline, its key focuses include extended fieldwork-based approaches to understanding what people are doing and valuing when they express themselves musically.

Ethnomusicologists give a special place to learning via the formation of relationships with members of musical communities and to learning via their own personal involvement in music-making itself. This experience, often both humbling and insightful, informs us as we build understandings, interpretations, and analyses upon those of the people with whom we live and study. In projects referred to as applied ethnomusicology, we also contribute as advocates or supporters, using our expertise to transform society in positive directions.

Our innovative one-year taught MA in Ethnomusicology offers a fresh and dynamic approach to the study of music at the postgraduate level in Ireland. The programme combines scholarship and performance in the study of a diverse range of music traditions from around the world.

Coursework includes a personalised research training preparation, musical performance, history and theory of ethnomusicology, multi-disciplinarity, performance studies, and ethnographic field research. MAs are completed by a research project, selected by the student, which ranges from ethnographic dissertations to major performance and from filmmaking to the creation of world music materials for the classroom.