Professor Rachel Harris

Professor Rachel Harris’s research is centered on China and Central Asia, with a particular focus on the Uyghurs. 

She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan over a period of twenty years. Her work focuses on maqam traditions, intangible cultural heritage, music and Islam, soundscapes, and state projects of territorialization. She applies her research through performance and transmission projects, including concerts, workshops, and recording projects.

With twenty years of experience in teaching and doctoral supervision in the field of ethnomusicology, she welcomes inquiries from prospective PhD students. Her most recent book is Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam (IUP 2020), and her most recent edited volume is Ethnographies of Islam in China (U Hawaii 2020). She has previously co-edited the journal Ethnomusicology Forum and served as series editor for the Routledge SOAS Studies in Music series.

Rachel Harris’s current project, ‘Maqām Beyond Nation’ https://www.maqamproject.uk, is an ERC advanced grant that draws on archival, ethnographic, and practice-based research. It focuses on maqām-based music-making in Central Asia, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, tracing histories of connection and travel, contemporary border-crossing initiatives, and music in the context of forced migration.

She was the principal investigator for the AHRC network (2013-15) and Leverhulme Research Project (2014-2017) ‘Sounding Islam in China’ https://www.soundislamchina.org. This project involved collaborative field research with local communities and researchers across various regions of China and resulted in a series of publications, including the 2020 edited volume ‘Ethnographies of Islam in China’.

Rachel also led the Uyghur Meshrep Project https://www.meshrep.uk, supported by the British Academy Sustainable Development Fund (2018-2021). This project aimed to document and revitalize expressive culture and promote sustainable development among Uyghur communities in Kazakhstan.

Her latest monograph, Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam, explores the Uyghur Islamic revival, using sound as a key medium through which to understand faith, religious change, political tensions, and violence.

Earlier books include ‘Singing the Village’ (2004), which explores the experience of the descendants of a Manchu garrison under the People’s Republic of China, and issues of identity, change, and the musical construction of place.

Her second monograph, The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia (2008), considers nationalist projects of canonization and the transformation of local traditions into national repertoires. Rachel has also published on the transnational circulation of popular musical styles, digital mediation, and identity formation across the Uyghur diaspora, as well as heritage and tourism in the securitized Uyghur region.