Ethnomusicology Institute

Ethnomusicology Institute

The Ethnomusicology Institute is a world-renowned international center for ethnomusicological research and training. We foster a research environment in which ethnomusicologists and scholars in related disciplines investigate the sound, performance, and conceptualization of musical thought and behavior. Among our prominent alumni are ethnomusicologists in the public and academic realms of the United States and 60 other countries around the world.

In sound, behavior, and concept, music is a profound means through which individuals and communities seek to understand and engage with the world. Students and faculty at the Ethnomusicology Institute work collaboratively to document, analyze, and interpret the capacities of music and sound to transform self and society across various social, political, and ideational axes.

Partners + Affiliations

As an intellectual community, we pursue collaborative and cooperative research projects and conferences, working with several allied units on campus, including:

Our curriculum

At Indiana University, we recognize that sound and music are fundamental to human experience and that music, broadly defined, is a core aspect of human behavior, thought, and practice. Our curriculum provides solid training in ethnomusicology, including courses on fieldwork, critical ethnography, research application of social theory, intellectual history, fieldwork, sound studies, and methodologies for applied, public practice, and activist approaches, along with classes in particular world areas and music genres, theoretical perspectives, and topics. 

Our graduate program has strengths in the music and cultures of the US, African American music and culture, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Arab Middle East, and Ireland, as well as in the transregional and diasporic study of Black music in the Americas.  Faculty and students lead cutting-edge research in ecomusicology, popular culture and media, violence and trauma studies, disaster studies, classical music from the Caribbean and Latin America, music and social movements, sports studies, carnival, sacred ecologies, gender studies, African American religious popular musics, performance-centered studies, Black archival practices, music and entertainment industry, and multispecies ethnography. The Ethnomusicology Institute also offers opportunities to train in archival, multimedia, and digital design and preservation.