Ruari Paterson-Achenbach

Ruari Paterson-Achenbach is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, currently a PhD candidate in Music at the University of Cambridge funded by the AHRC. Their work thinks about sound and performance as vehicles for memory, resistance and the radical potentials of social life. Through an intimate, affective engagement with Outsider Music, their PhD project hopes to uncover an alternative archive of sound, unveiling radical potential for creativity within and through non-normative social life. More broadly, their research interests include queer temporality, critical listening, creative anarchism, black feminist thought and decoloniality.

They completed their MA in Gender, Media and Culture in the Sociology department of Goldsmiths, University of London and have a BA in Music from the University of Cambridge. 

Ruari was also a ‘New Creative’ and has produced works with and for the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, BBC and NTS Radio. They have performed in spaces such as Tate Modern, the London Contemporary Music Festival, Cafe OTO and the Heong Gallery. They love to find joy and beauty in the everyday.

They are a co-convenor of the Ambivalent Archives research network at CRASSH, 2023-24.