Rachel Harris (Principal Investigator) is Professor of Music at SOAS, University of London. Her research centres on China and Central Asia, and especially on Uyghur expressive culture. She has conducted fieldwork in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan over a period of twenty years. Her work focuses on intangible cultural heritage, music and Islam, soundscapes, state projects of territorialisation, and transnational flows of people and culture. She works in applied ways with performance and transmission projects, including concerts, workshops, and recording.
Rachel was principal investigator on the Leverhulme Research Project (2014-2017) Sounding Islam in China. The project involved collaborative field research with local communities and researchers in selected regions of China, and a series of publications including the edited volume Ethnographies of Islam in China. Her latest monograph Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam focuses on the Uyghur Islamic revival, using sound as a key medium through which to understand the experience of faith, patterns of religious change, political tensions and violence.
Earlier books include Singing the Village, which explores the musical life of the descendants of a Manchu garrison in the Uyghur region. Her second book, The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia, considers nationalist projects of canonisation, and the transformation of local traditions into national repertoires. She has published on the transnational circulation of popular musical styles including reggae, flamenco and Hindi film music, and processes of digital mediation and identity formation across the Uyghur diaspora.
She is involved with advocacy initiatives for Uyghur rights, and led the Uyghur Meshrep Project, supported by the British Academy Sustainable Development Fund (2018-2021), which worked to document and revitalise expressive culture and to promote sustainable development amongst Uyghur communities in Kazakhstan.
Staff profile: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/rachel-harris