About

Led by Dr. Michelle Assay, WOMUSIRAN or Women and Western Art Music in Iran is a ground-breaking interdisciplinary, intersectional and intersectoral project that investigates links between gender, Islam, migration, and cultural appropriation through the prism of Western art music in Iran. It traces the fate of female composers, teachers, scholars, and practitioners whose work and careers before, during, and after the 1979 Revolution, and in response to the post-Revolutionary tightened controls on women and music-making, especially in the fields of solo singing and dance. Drawing on interviews, testimonies and archival material, alongside textual and musical assessments, WOMUSIRAN presents a bottom-up cultural and geopolitical history of the role of those pioneering female musicians in shaping the historiography and narrative of music in Iran, impacting post-1979 diasporic communities, and contributing to present-day possibilities for women in Iran’s re-emergent musical and cultural life.

WOMUSIRAN hosts an ongoing database and a cutting-edge digital research resource that include the latest information and material on concepts, personalities, music works, institutions, publications, genres, and other aspects of Western-art-music in and related to Iran, as well as a research diary, a directory of Iran-related Western art music practitioners and scholars and links to affiliated events and media output.

Funded by EPSRC (project number EP/X02251X/1) as part of the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee, WOMUSIRAN has received the seal of approval of the European Research Executive Office as a part of the Marie Skłodowska Curie scheme. WOMUSIRAN is a partnership between King’s College London and University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music. The project benefits from and is grateful for the mentorship and generous support of Professor Martin Stokes (KCL) and Dr. Joshua Pilzer (University of Toronto), as well as collaborations with the Silk Road Ensemble and the Maison des Cultures du Monde.

 

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