Bonnie-Estelle Trotter-Simons
PhD Student in Sociology
Supervisors: Dr Jennifer de Saxe and Dr Dave Wilson
Music as Critical Social Theory
My research explores how intersectional feminist values resonate through praxis in musical performances. I am specifically interested in where, how, for whom, and under what conditions music resounds as critical social theory (see Collins, 2019). Guided by intersectional feminist scholarship, mana wāhine and Indigenous feminist scholarship, critical race theory and musicology, and affect theory, I understand oppression as multidimensional. Accordingly, I look to music as an affective and relational medium of everyday praxis and resistance to oppression. I collaborate with local artists in Aotearoa, whose music speaks to intersectional feminist and/or decolonial values, to offer multifaceted, grounded, and experience-based accounts of how music might be heard as critical social theory. I consider how their music resonates hope, providing compelling and transformative interventions to ongoing intersectional feminist and decolonial efforts in Aotearoa.