糖心原创

Contact

• workRoom A9 Department of Music
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work+44 (0)115 95 14641
• Lonan.Obriain@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

I am Professor of Ethnomusicology at the 糖心原创. My research examines the global history of music, musical infrastructures and audio technologies, exploring what sound production reveals about states, minorities and the environment across eastern Asia and northern Europe. I joined Nottingham in 2013 after teaching at the Universities of Birmingham and Sheffield, and have held a chair since 2022.

Alongside my research, I have spent much of my career in academic leadership. I served two terms as Head of the Department of Music, concluding in 2026, and before that spent several years as the Department's Director of Research. I am currently Ethics Officer for the School of Humanities.

My research has been recognised with a Philip Leverhulme Prize (2021), the inaugural Book Prize of the International Council for Traditional Music (now the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance) and an SMI Book Prize. I completed a PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of Sheffield, having earlier trained in performance and composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. I have held visiting research fellowships at the Vietnam Institute of Culture and Arts Studies and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences.

Expertise Summary

My research spans three connected areas. The first is sound as infrastructure: how broadcasting, recording and audio technologies shape political life, and how sound figures in the resilience and erasure of urban communities. The second is music, minorities and the state, grounded in long-term fieldwork in northern Vietnam. The third is music and environment, at the intersection of anthropology, ecology and sound studies. I also write on popular music in Ireland and on ethnomusicological theory and method.

I have published two monographs with Oxford University Press and two edited volumes, as well as articles and reviews in journals including Ethnomusicology, Yearbook for Traditional Music, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and Journal of American Folklore. My research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the Association for Southeast Asian Studies in the UK.

For a decade I served as an editor of Traditions of Music and Dance (Cambridge University Press), completing my tenure with a four-year term as General Editor (2023-26), during which I chaired the editorial board and sat on the Executive Board of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance. I previously served as Chair of ICTM Ireland and Ireland's representative to the Council, as reviews editor for Ethnomusicology Forum and as guest editor for the world of music. I also served a full term as a member of AHRC Peer Review College.

Teaching Summary

I regularly convene the modules 'Music in Asia', 'Global Music Studies', 'Music and Environmentalism' and 'Approaches to Popular Music' at undergraduate level. I also supervise undergraduate… read more

Research Summary

My current research investigates how music and environmental sound functions as infrastructure in Southeast Asian cities, and how music and sonic practices help communities endure (or are erased by)… read more

Selected Publications

• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2022. Voices of Vietnam: A Century of Radio, Red Music, and Revolution Oxford University Press.
• 脫 BRIAIN, L. and ONG, M. Y., eds., 2021. Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology. Bloomsbury.
• MANGAOANG, 脕, O'FLYNN, J. and 脫 BRIAIN, L., eds., 2021. Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music. Routledge.
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2018. Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam. Oxford University Press.

• View all publications

I regularly convene the modules 'Music in Asia', 'Global Music Studies', 'Music and Environmentalism' and 'Approaches to Popular Music' at undergraduate level. I also supervise undergraduate dissertations in ethnomusicology, popular music studies and related areas.

At postgraduate level, I warmly welcome enquiries from potential research students on topics including East and Southeast Asian performing arts, music in Britain and Ireland, ethnomusicological theory and method, ecomusicology, popular musics of the world and music and minorities.

Current Research

My current research investigates how music and environmental sound functions as infrastructure in Southeast Asian cities, and how music and sonic practices help communities endure (or are erased by) rapid urban change. Alongside this, I am co-editing The Cambridge Companion to Music and Environment (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) with Kirsten Paige, which brings together new work on the relationships between musical practice and the environment. I am also developing a monograph on music and environmentalism in Vietnam.

My most recent monograph, Voices of Vietnam: A Century of Radio, Red Music, and Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2022), is the first comprehensive English-language history of radio music ensembles in mainland Southeast Asia. Drawing on a year of fieldwork at the Voice of Vietnam studios and archival research in Vietnam, France and the United States, it traces broadcasting culture from the Indochinese radio clubs of the 1920s to the present, showing how music production and sound reproduction are integral to state formation. This was awarded the SMI Book Prize as well as being shortlisted for monograph of the year by the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association.

My first book, Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018), won the inaugural ICTM Book Prize. Based on extensive fieldwork in the northern mountains, it examines how the performing arts shape understandings of ethnicity and nationhood in pos-socialist Vietnam.

I have also co-edited two volumes. Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology (Bloomsbury, 2021), with Min Yen Ong, examines the producers, musicians and technologies that broadcast local musical cultures across eastern Asia and the Pacific. Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge, 2021), with 脕ine Mangaoang and John O'Flynn, is a wide-ranging introduction to the history, sociology and musicology of Irish popular music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2022. Voices of Vietnam: A Century of Radio, Red Music, and Revolution Oxford University Press.
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2022. 鈥業 Choose Formosa Fish!鈥� The Cultivation of Environmental Awareness through Song. In: HARDWICK, P and HOOD, M. M., eds., The Animal Within: Exploring Ecologies of Human and Animal Relations in the Performing Arts of Southeast Asia. (In Press.)
• MANGAOANG, 脕, O'FLYNN, J. and 脫 BRIAIN, L., eds., 2021. Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music. Routledge.
• GUBBINS, H. and 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2021. Broadcasting Pop: The Fanning Sessions as a Gateway to New Music. In: MANGAOANG, 脕, O'FLYNN, J. and 脫 BRIAIN, L., eds., Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music. Routledge. 31-41
• MANGAOANG, 脕., O'FLYNN, J. and 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2021. Introduction: Irish Popular Music and its Research. In: MANGAOANG, 脕, O'FLYNN, J. and 脫 BRIAIN, L., eds., Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music. Routledge. 1-15
• 脫 BRIAIN, L. and ONG, M. Y., eds., 2021. Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology. Bloomsbury.
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2021. Music Industries and Historiographies. In: MANGAOANG, 脕, O'FLYNN, J. and 脫 BRIAIN, L., eds., Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music. Routledge. 17-18
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2021. Harmonies for the Homeland: Traditional Music and the Politics of Intangible Cultural Heritage on Vietnamese Radio. In: 脫 BRIAIN, L. and ONG, M. Y., eds., Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology Bloomsbury. 73-90
• 脫 BRIAIN, L. and ONG, M. Y., 2021. Introduction: Musical Media in the Asia Pacific. In: 脫 BRIAIN, L. and ONG, M. Y., eds., Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology Bloomsbury. 1-12
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2021. Review of Singing the Rite to Belong: Music, Ritual, and the New Irish Ethnomusicology. 65(2), 390-392
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2021. Jealous Corona: Social Media, Musical Propaganda and Public Health in Vietnam Perfect Beat. 21(2), 111-117
• BROWN, D. and 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2021. Dialogue on Multimedia Resources, Music Education and My People Tell Stories Yearbook for Traditional Music. 52, 203-208
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2020. Comment on Jean Michaud鈥檚 鈥淭he Art of Not Being Scripted So Much: The Politics of Writing Hmong Language(s)鈥� Current Anthropology. 60(2), 254-255
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2019. Review of Television in Post-Reform Vietnam: Nation, Media, Market. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 50(3), 464-466
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2018. Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam. Oxford University Press.
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2018.
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2018. Ethnomusicology Forum. 27(3),
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2017. Introduction: Sounding and Silencing Ethnicity in the 21st Century. the world of music (new series). 3(2), 7-17
• 脫 BRIAIN, L. (ED), 2017. Special Issue: Sounding Ethnicity: New Perspectives on Music, Identity and Place. the world of music (new series). 3(2),
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., S. E. TAN AND A. WOOD, 2017. Ethnomusicology Forum. 26(2), 149-150
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., S. E. TAN AND A. WOOD, 2017. Ethnomusicology Forum. 26(1), 1-2
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2016. Journal of Sonic Studies. 12,
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., J. STOCK AND A. WOOD, 2016. Ethnomusicology Forum. 25(1), 1-3
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2016. Review of Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. South East Asia Research. 24(3), 439-40
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., J. STOCK AND A. WOOD, 2016. Editorial. Ethnomusicology Forum. 25(2), 143-45
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2016. Reports from ICTM National and Regional Representatives: Ireland. Bulletin of the International Council for Traditional Music. 132, 20-21
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., J. STOCK AND A. WOOD, 2016. Editorial Ethnomusicology Forum. 25(3), 253-254
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2015. Review of Korean Musical Drama: P鈥檃nsori and the Making of Tradition in Modernity. Ethnomusicology Ireland.
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., J. STOCK AND T. WIGGINS, 2015. Ethnomusicology Forum. 24(1), 1-3
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2015. Vietnam. In: WILLIAMS, S., ed., The Ethnomusicologists' Cookbook, Volume II: Complete Meals from Around the World. Routledge. 44-46
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., J. STOCK AND T. WIGGINS, 2015. Ethnomusicology Forum. 24(2), 141-142
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2015. Journal of World Popular Music. 2(2), 289-306
• 脫 BRIAIN, L. AND J. STOCK, 2015. Editorial. Ethnomusicology Forum. 24(3), 301-303
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2014. Asian Music. 45(2), 32-57
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2013. Journal of Vietnamese Studies. 8(2), 115-148
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2013. 鈥�Qeej Tu Siav (Song of Expiring Life).鈥� Field recording and accompanying liner notes in the compilation, ITCM-Ireland: Fieldwork.
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2012. Review of website, EVIA Digital Archives Project (www.eviada.org). Journal of American Folklore. 125(496), 257-258
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2012. Singing as Social Life: Three Perspectives on Kwv Txhiaj from Vietnam. Hmong Studies Journal. 13(1), 1-26
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2011. Review of Popular Music of Vietnam: the Politics of Remembering, the Economics of Forgetting. Asian Music. 42(1), 134-137
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2011. Getting To Know Each Other. SEM Student News. 2, 9-10
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2010. Review of Songs for the Spirits: Music and Mediums in Modern Vietnam. Ethnomusicology Forum. 19(1), 117-119
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2010. Review of The Musical Traditions of Northern Ireland and its Diaspora: Community and Conflict. Yearbook for Traditional Music. 42, 212-214
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2009. Review of CD recording, Vietnam: Vocal Music from the Northern Plains (VDE-Gallo CD 1207). Ethnomusicology Forum. 18(2), 285-287
• 脫 BRIAIN, L., 2008. Finding My Feet. Sheffield Ethnomusicology. 5, 1-2