Rate My Professor Lonán Ó Briain

Lonán Ó Briain serves as Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Faculty of Arts' Department of Music at The University of Nottingham. His academic background includes studies in ethnomusicology at the University of Sheffield, as well as training in music performance and composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He joined the University of Nottingham in September 2013 after teaching positions at the Universities of Birmingham and Sheffield. Ó Briain has held visiting research fellowships at the Vietnam Institute of Culture and Arts Studies and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. He serves as General Editor of Traditions of Music and Dance for Cambridge University Press, is a member of the Executive Board of the International Council for Traditional Music, and participates in the AHRC Peer Review College. Previously, he chaired ICTM Ireland, represented Ireland on the ICTM, edited reviews for Ethnomusicology Forum, and guest-edited for the world of music.

Ó Briain's research interests cover the global history of music, musical infrastructures and audio technologies, music and minorities, ethnomusicological theory and methods, music education, and the politics of culture in eastern Asia and northern Europe, with emphasis on mainland Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, ethnic minority communities such as the Hmong, intangible cultural heritage, and the environment. His projects received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, and Association for Southeast Asian Studies in the UK. Key publications are Voices of Vietnam: A Century of Radio, Red Music, and Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2022), drawn from ethnographic fieldwork at Vietnam's national radio studios, interviews, historical recordings, and archival research across Vietnam, France, and the United States; Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018), based on three years of fieldwork; Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology (edited with Min Yen Ong, Bloomsbury, 2021); and Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music (edited, Routledge, 2021). Awards include the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2021 and the inaugural International Council for Traditional Music Book Prize for Musical Minorities.