Professor Henry Johnson

Professor Henry Johnson is associate director, Centre for Global Migrations, and co-director, asian migrations research theme, at the University of Otago.

Henry Johnson studied Indian music at Dartington College of Arts, UK, and specialised in sitar performance.

His published research on South Asia has focussed on performance and festivals amongst the South Asian diaspora in the New Zealand context. In this setting, he has undertaken ethnographic research on various performance events and published especially on the Diwali festival in its various New Zealand manifestations.

His recent book chapters and articles in this field have appeared in India in New Zealand (Otago University Press, 2010), Musical Performance in the Diaspora (Routledge, 2007), Sociology of Diaspora (Rawat, 2007), Ethnomusicology Forum (2007) and New Zealand Journal of Media Studies (2007).

At the University of Otago, he teaches aspects of North and South Indian music in “Music in World Cultures" and "Music in Asian Cultures”.

He was president of the New Zealand Asian Studies Society, and at the University of Otago is co-director of the asian migrations research theme, and member of the Asia–New Zealand research cluster. He is the main supervisor of a PhD research project on Indian performance networks in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

For more details, see Professor Johnson’s profile.