hey there. welcome to my blog. i’m brigitta, a second-year phd student currently doing music/social research fieldwork in north-western Australia. this pocket of the ether is a place where i document some of my big ideas, big feelings, big epiphanies, big transfigurations along the way.

my phd investigates how Aboriginal women in the West Kimberley region use radio musicking to empower themselves and their communities. my previous research projects explore how women use performance spaces to enact agency both in the performance moment and in their everyday lives within the community, and how self-taught musicians in Kepulauan Riau, Indonesia engage with growing cosmopolitanism in their region. my masters thesis, completed in 2018 at Monash University, investigates community musicking institutions in Derby, WA, where local First Nations musos use their practice to negotiate contemporary notions of cultural identity through performance, among other things.

a lot of what you’ll read here arose in relationship with Wadjuk Noongar boodjar and Nyikina/Warwa country, and before that, Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung, Wurundjeri and Wiradjuri country. Noongar, Nyikina, Warwa, Boonwurring, Woiwurring, Wurundjeri and Wiradjuri never ceded sovereignty. i pay my respects to the traditional owners of these nations as well as to the waterways, creatures, forests, soils, rocks, and weather systems that sustain life in these places.