Rachel Beckles Willson
Professor by special appointment Intercultural Performing Arts
- Name
- Prof.dr. R. Beckles Willson
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 1480
- r.beckles.willson@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0003-1421-8767
Rachel Beckles Willson is Professor of Intercultural Performing Arts at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA). This chair was established by Codarts. Her current artistic research interests lie in ecological justice, relationships with the other-than-human, and multi-media technologies.
More information about Rachel Beckles Willson
PhD candidates
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Fields of interest
Prof. Rachel Beckles Willson has a hybrid professional arts practice, active as multi-instrumentalist, composer and scholar. Her current research interests lie in ecological justice, relationships with the other-than-human, and multi-media technologies. They have grown out of earlier work on decoloniality (Orientalism and Musical Mission: Palestine and the West (2013)), the cultural life of musical instruments (The Oud: An Illustrated History (2023)), and activist work with people on the move (‘Migration, music and the mobile phone: a case study in technology and socio-economic justice in Sicily’ (2019)). Her early career was as a concert pianist, following studies at the Royal Academy of Music, London and the Liszt Academy, Budapest, while her career as a scholar began with PhD studies at King’s College London, and a focus on contemporary music of Hungary (György Kurtág, The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza (2004) and Ligeti, Kurtág, and Hungarian Music during the Cold War (2007)).
Professor by special appointment Intercultural Performing Arts
- Faculty of Humanities
- Academie der Kunsten
- Beckles Willson R. (2024), Be water, be light. CD. London, UK: PIllango. [audio].
- Beckles Willson R. (2024), A thousand and one hopes. CD. London, UK: PIllango. [audio].
- Beckles Willson R. (2023), The Oud: an illustrated history. Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books.
- Beckles Willson R. (2023), Teatime! : (Did you think I was here to make the tea?). MP3: NMC RECORDINGS. [audio].
- Beckles Willson R. (2021), Migration, music and the mobile phone: a case study in technology and socio-economic justice in Sicily, Ethnomusicology Forum 30(2): 226-245.
- Beckles Willson R. (2020), The individual outside the community: music education in a fraught space. In: Vu K.T. & Quadros A. de (Eds.), My body was left on the street: music education and displacement. Innovations and Controversies: Interrogating Educational Change. Leiden: Brill. 49-61.
- Beckles Willson R. (2019), Listening through the warzone of Europe, Ethnomusicology 63(2): 289-295.
- Beckles Willson R. (2019), Hearing global modernity: the case of the travelling oud, International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 7(1): 458-485.
- Beckles Willson R. (2019), Orientation through Instruments: the ʿūd, the Palestinian Home, and Kamīlyā Jubrān, The World of Music 8(1): 23-48 (2).
- Beckles Willson R. (2018), Analysing sonic authority: sensoriality, affect and the unsettled body. In: Reyland N. & Thumpston R. (Eds.), Music analysis and the body: experiments, explorations and embodiments. Leuven Studies in Musicology no. 6. Leuiven: Peeters. 125-140.