About Joseph Edwards

I recently completed the MA Music (Ethnomusicology Pathway) at SOAS, University of London. Still based in London, I’m currently working towards an editorial role within the publishing industry. My dissertation observed the practices of breathing and swallowing, both of which involve a frequent and often audible exchange between our interior and exterior. These practices provided a clear methodology for narrating illness experience, specifically how breathing and swallowing both transform and are transformed through my own condition: a rare congenital birth defect known as a tracheo-oesophageal fistula (TOF). This allows for an engaged and revealing exploration of chronic illness experience, one that considers how a congenital abnormality can become the perceptual locus for an embodied experience of being-in-the-world. The study draws from a diverse literature including phenomenological philosophy, sound studies, narrative medicine, and medical anthropology. My research interests are varied, previously writing papers which consider nostalgia in contemporary Mizrahi musical culture, link ecomusicology and acoustic ecology to the reconstruction of sustainable food systems, explore class and postcolonial discourse in the rumba lingala of Belgo-Congolese hip hop and examine representations of race in the digital reproductions of 13th century Iberian manuscripts. I attended King’s College London for my undergraduate and previously trained as a professional violinist, attending the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music.

Writer, violinist and recent MA graduate from SOAS, University of London. Contact him via email at joseph8edwards@gmail.com, through Twitter @joseph8edwards, or on Linkedin at www.linkedin.com/in/joseph8edwards.

NBN Episodes hosted by Joseph:

April 5, 2024

Quartet

Leah Broad

Hosted by Joseph Edwards

This is a story of four composers whose careers, lives and loves as women working in 20th century Britain have since been largely forgotten. Dr Leah …

April 4, 2024

Distant Melodies

Edward Dusinberre

Hosted by Joseph Edwards

The first violinist of the Takács Quartet weaves scholarship on Edward Elgar, Antonin Dvořák, Bela Bartók and Benjamin Britten with a deeply personal …