Anna Morcom

Anna Morcom is Professor and Mohindar Brar Sambhi Chair of Indian Music in the Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music. She previously held a professorship at Royal Holloway, University of London, and earned her Ph.D. from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in 2002, where she also completed her undergraduate studies in Ethnomusicology and Hindi (1993-1996).

Her research spans music and dance in India and Tibet, employing ethnographic and oral historical methods to examine the intersections of musical culture with politics, nationalism, identity, gender, inequality, economic development, and media. Morcom's scholarship is notable for its interdisciplinary approach that bridges traditional and popular musics with contemporary theoretical frameworks.

Her work demonstrates significant trends toward examining music within economic frameworks, particularly through her founding of SEM's Special Interest Group on Economic Ethnomusicology. Recent publications increasingly focus on cultural economies, performance labor, and the relationship between artistic practice and economic systems in South Asia.

• Society of Ethnomusicology's Allan Merriam prize (2014)
• Marcia Herndon prize of SEM's Gender and Sexualities section (2014)

Morcom's research has been supported by multiple grants from the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy. She has been interviewed by prominent media outlets including BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed, The Hindu, Tehelka, and Scroll regarding her influential work on Indian dance cultures. As founder of SEM's Special Interest Group on Economic Ethnomusicology, she has shaped scholarly discourse on the economic dimensions of musical practice.

Her current projects include the monograph on Hindustani music and co-editing two significant volumes: Creative Economies of Culture in South Asia: Craftspeople Performers (Routledge) and the Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology (OUP).