As a music-maker and language revivalist from the south coast Noongar region of Western Australia, I am interested in the connections between song, language, and landscapes. My work intersects with applied linguistics, ecomusicology, Australian studies, and Indigenous studies.
I am lead Chief Investigator for ARC DI project 'Restoring on-Country Performance' and a Chief Investigator for ARC LIEF project 'Nyingarn: A platform for primary sources in Australian Indigenous languages', ARC DI project 'The role of First Nations’ music as a determinant of health', and ARC Linkage project 'Life After Digitisation: Future-Proofing WA's Vulnerable Cultural Heritage'.
After working as an ESL and music teacher, I helped establish the major in Indigenous Knowledge at the University of Western Australia, where I completed a PhD in Noongar song. At the University of Sydney I co-developed the major in contemporary music for Sydney Conservatorium of Music, before returning to Western Australia at Edith Cowan University to bolster humanities research in my home state. Recent arts-language projects I have collaborated on include a mainstage production of Shakespeare's Macbeth in Noongar (Hecate 2020), a Bruce Lee film dubbed in Noongar (Fist of Fury Noongar Daa 2021), and the multi-sensory ‘Noongar Wonderland’ performance installation in Perth Festival 2022.
I serve as Deputy Chair of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and received the 2020 Barrett Award for Australian Studies.
Mary is a musician and researcher in the psychology of music, which involves applying psychological science theory and methods to study human thought, feeling and behaviour in relation to music. Her research conjoins art and science, using neurophysiological, behavioural, quantitative and qualitative techniques, to gain insights into how humans generate and audiences respond to music, and the impact this can have on individuals and groups. Mary's interdisciplinary research includes work in music perception and cognition, human action and interaction through music performance, audience engagement and development, music in the early childhood period, and promoting individual and community wellbeing through active participation in music performance. As a percussionist, Mary has performed with orchestras such as the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and West Australian Symphony Orchestra, and has performed nationally and internationally as a chamber and solo musician.
Associate Professor Eve Klein’s compositions have been called vivid, revolutionary, inclusive, moving and must-see. Winner of the 2023 Art Music Award for Experimental Practice, Klein brings orchestral music into dialogue with immersive and interactive technologies for screen, art music and mass festival audiences. Klein's work has been experienced by hundreds of thousands of people globally at Salisbury Cathedral, Burning Man, New York University, VIVID Sydney, MONA, GOMA, Brisbane Festival, World Science Festival, the Arts Centre Melbourne and the State Library of Queensland. As Lead Composer for Textile Audio, Eve crafts City Symphony, an interactive AR music experience overlaying Brisbane CBD (available via iOS and Android app stores).
Klein creates artworks in collaboration with community groups, festivals, researchers, and NGOs to achieve community transformation goals. Recent projects have explored gendered and racial violence, climate change, disaster recovery and refugee rights. Klein's work, Vocal Womb, is an example of this practice, allowing the audience to explore the relationship between voice, identity and power by stepping into and directly manipulating the voice of another. The premier was called the "#1 coolest thing at MOFO 2018" (Timeout Melbourne) and "One of the must-see music/artworks of the 2018 festival... a deeply considered engagement with the history and traditions of opera" (The Conversation).
Klein is Associate Professor of Music Technology, leading an interactive music and spatial audio research cluster at the University of Queensland, guiding postgraduate composers on the creation of immersive, interacitve, virtual reality and augmented reality concert works and operas.
"This is contemporary music at its most relevant – it is simultaneously inward and outward focused in addressing the challenge of its existence and its capacity to produce something great.” - Melonie Bayl-Smith, Cyclic Defrost, Issue 31
“Excellence in Experimental Practice was awarded to Eve Klein for City Symphony, a Brisbane sound walk revolutionising audiences' engagement with urban environments, underpinned by an ethos of collaborative inclusivity and accessibility.” -Australian Music Centre
“One of the must-see music/art works of the 2018 festival was Eve Klein’s Vocal Womb … a deeply considered engagement with the history and traditions of opera.” - Svenja J. Kratz -The Conversation
Dr. Anne Levitskyis a scholar and performer of medieval vernacular song, in particular troubadour lyric poetry, and its connections to the larger cultural milieu of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. She is a graduate of Stanford University and earned her PhD in Historical Musicology from Columbia University in May 2018. At present, she is Lecturer in Music at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and has taught previously at Columbia, Dixie State University (now called Utah Tech), and Stony Brook University. As an academic, she is interested in medieval vernacular song, poetry, and narrative literature, and she is currently at work on two projects. The first, Sound(ing) Bodies: Song and Materiality in Troubadour Lyric Poetry, is under contract with Liverpool University Press for their series Exeter Studies in Medieval Culture. It reads troubadour lyric poetry in the context of philosophical, theological, and medical writings available in the twelfth century, and uses this analytical frame to employ new methods for the analysis of medieval monophonic song. The second project, Singing in the Reign: Song, Grammar, and Politics in the Thirteenth-Century Northern Mediterranean, explores how song is used in the courts of the northern Mediterranean in the thirteenth century to produce specific notions of space and geography, and demonstrates how Occitan song and grammars were involved in the (re)formation of these regimes. Dr. Levitsky is also interested in the presence and role of medievalisms in popular music, especially in heavy metal.
She supplements this academic interest in vernacular song with an active performance career, and has studied and performed lyric poetry with the Narbonne-based Troubadours Art Ensemble, and recorded troubadour and trouvère songs both with the group and as a soloist. Dr. Levitsky performs regularly with professional ensemble Fractio Modi (of which she is a founding member), and in Brisbane. Past performances include a June 2013 performance with the Rolling Stones in Washington, DC, tours to Germany with NYC-based chamber ensemble GHOSTLIGHT Chorus, and concerts of monophony and polyphony from the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries on Columbia's Music at St. Paul's concert series. Dr. Levitsky has also served as the director of the Collegium Musicum, one of Columbia University's leading choral ensembles.
Samantha’s research and postgraduate supervision centres on historical performance practices and performance cultures. Her published output comprises two main strands. First: the influence and reception of German music and musicians in Australasia, 1850–1950 (including itinerant German bands, and the music of J. S. Bach) and the history of listening cultures in Australasia during the first half of the 20th century (including the impact of the gramophone and radio broadcasting). And, second: early modern German court music (in particular the Württemberg Hofkapelle); professional women musicians in the 17th and 18th centuries; the early history of the orchestra and oboe bands (Hautboistenbande); and John Sigismond Cousser (Kusser) and the musical life of early 18th-century Dublin.
She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (from 2012), and has also held visiting fellowships at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany (2004); Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (2007–2008); and, as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow, at the Institut für Musik, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (2009–2010) and the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig, Germany (2018).
In 2011–2017, Samantha was an Associate and (from 2015) International Investigator with the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions: Europe 1100–1800. Her monograph, The Well-Travelled Musician: John Sigismond Cousser and Musical Exchange in Baroque Europe (Boydell Press, 2017), was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant (2013– 2015). Most recently, she received funding from the Lilburn Trust for hosting a scholarly symposium on Music in Colonial New Zealand Cities (November 2022); an edited volume of the papers is currently in preparation.
From 1994 until 2023, Samantha taught papers on historical performance practice, the history of Western European music of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the history of Western art music in New Zealand, 1850–1950 (including jazz, classical and popular music). She was employed full time at the University of Queensland from 2001 until 2015 (Lecturer–Associate Professor). In 2015 she returned to New Zealand, where she held the positions of Associate Professor (2015–2018) and Professor of Musicology (2019–2024) at the New Zealand School of Music – Te Kōkī.
Samantha has been the editor of numerous scholarly books and works as a freelance indexer; her index for Music at German Courts: Changing Artistic Priorities (Boydell Press, 2011) won the 2012 medal of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers.
I'm an immersive technology researcher developing novel approaches to 3D experiences and research from the perspective of a multimedia creative artist. With a diverse foundation in music production, composition, audio engineering, and game development, I spearhead initiatives that harness creative works for positive societal and environmental impact.
Current projects include:
Algorithm validation and procedure generation for LiDAR scanning techniques to enable more accurate biodiversity and biomass calculations,
Prototyping first-person 360 camera technologies and co-producing 360VR simulations for domestic and family violence prevention and education, and
Investigating AI NPC interactions within immersive simulations to develop interpersonal capabilities within complex situations.
