Dr Vanessa Elbaz

Dr. Elbaz' work focuses on the cultural histories of sound in the diasporic regions of 1492’s expulsion, describing how issues of transmission, regeneration and the negotiations of gender and power intersect with sound, philosophy, and belief until today. Focusing on sonic transmission and languages of the Sephardi community and its diasporas as well as the use of music in relating to the national narratives of diversity in both Eastern and Western Mediterranean regions, her research combines ethnography and historical musicology to understand how voice, sound and music affect the long durée in diasporic communities. She is described as “a kind of one-woman roving museum of her own” by The New York Times, and was featured in a 2022 New York Times feature on Judeo Spanish women's music. Dr. Elbaz has also written extensively on Judeo-Muslim relations through culture and public diplomacy of popular music.  Her Ph.D. was awarded with félicitations du jury from Sorbonne’s CERMOM research group of the INALCO (Center for Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies of the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilization), was nominated for the prize for the best dissertation of the year. She founded KHOYA: les archives sonores du Maroc juif in 2013 to gather, classify, archive and disseminate sounds, music and audiovisuals of the remaining Jewish community in Morocco. She has received numerous prestigious academic awards such as the H2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellowship for her project MigrEnAb - Encoding, Absorption and Abandonment of Cultural Material during Migration: The Case of Judeo-Spanish Songbooks, a 2014-2016 Posen Fellow, a 2015-2018 Research Fellow of the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, and a 2018 Broome and Allen Fellow from the American Sephardi Federation. In 2018 she was presented with an award for Vivre Ensemble from the Marocains Pluriels Association and honoured for her cultural contributions to Morocco by the Hassan II Mosque's Foundation. In 2019 she received the inaugural Florence Amzallag prize from the American Sephardi Federation and Mimouna Association at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

Dr. Elbaz is the Chair of the Mediterranean Music Studies Group of the International Council for Traditional Music and Dance (ICTMD), and the Treasurer of the British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies and serves on the Boards of the Tangier American Legation Institute of Moroccan Studies, the Jewish Music Institute and the Institute for Tolerance Studies.

Forthcoming volumes include a monograph La voix du détroit : chants, femmes, pouvoir dans le monde sépharade du Maroc. Studies in the History and Society of the Maghrib, Brill and a special issue of Journal Yod, Presses de l’INALCO  “ Judeo-Spanish Songbooks as a Sonic Technology of Transmission”.

She is Co-Editor for a volume entitled Sonic Interventions in the Western Mediterranean: Music and Sound, Memory and Meaning, Commissioned by The British Academy Proceedings and Oxford University Press.

Her work is regularly featured in the international press such as BBC, Al Jaz`eera, i24, France24, L'Express, NPR, PRI, Radio Pompidou etc and is a frequent consultant for documentary film projects and media pieces. She is also an internationally known performer of Sephardi repertoires.

Keynote lectures:

• Keynote for Workshop Mus/ar/t Art Meets Scholarship, Universität Hamburg, March 28-29, 2023.
• Keynote for the conference Away from Home: Ideas, Emotions, Images and Writings on Homesickness in the Mediterranean World (1492-1923) Biblioteca National de Portugal, Universidad Novã de Lisboa, June 20-21, 2022.
• Keynote “The Body, the Voice and the Matriarch: Sonic Transmission of (En)gendering beyond Language    and Belief” (En)gendering Ladino ucLadino, University of California Los Angeles, April 11, 2022.
• Keynote “Judeo-Spanish women's songs in Morocco: the discovery of the core communal role of a nearly forgotten repertoire”. E. Allison Peers Symposium  on Minorities in the Hispanic World: Contemporary and Historical Contexts & Perspectives, Peers Annual Lecture, University of Liverpool, October 30 2019.
• Keynote “Sephardi Women and Patriarchy” Interfaith Conference at Berry College, Georgia. March 27 2019.

Conference Organization:

Co-Chair of Programming Committee for The Body in Action: Performance, Ritual and Dance 15th Symposium of the Mediterranean Music Study Group Pelermo, Italy September 23-27, 2024. 

Member of Programming Committee for Music, Bridges, Passages: Towards a Mediterranean paradigm? 14th ICTM Mediterranean Music Study Group Symposium, Marseille, June 26-30, 2023.

Organizer and Convenor of Workshop on Trance, Ritual Sound and Migration, Magdelene College, Cambridge. January 24, 2023.

Co-Organizer of Creative and Artistic Encounters in the Western Mediterranean, University of Aberdeen, September 5-7, 2022.

Chair of Programming Committee. Music, Power, and Space: a Mediterranean perspective, 13th Symposium for the International Council for Traditional Music Mediterranean Music Study Group, September, Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies and Musée des Cultures Mediterranéens, Tangier, 2021.

Co-convenor and organiser of Yallah: Judeo-Arabic Music Workshop and Conference. Hosted by the Jewish Music Institute in collaboration with Musical Encounters across the Strait of Gibraltar. SOAS, University of London. February 9-10, 2020.

Co-convenor and organiser of Evolutions or revolutions? Contemporary Middle Eastern and North African Music, their traditions and new tendencies, INALCO, International colloquium, Paris, June 13-14, 2017.

Lecture series curator and organiser, SOC Casablanca, 2016-2018.

Convenor Colloquium on Written and recorded traces from Jewish Tangier. Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, May 23, 2014.