Christian POSKE, PhD
(AMMR grantee)
Email: poske@mdw.ac.at
Christian Poske is an ethnomusicologist whose research interests include the performing arts of eastern and north-eastern India and Bangladesh, music and conflict, ecomusicology, oral history, and community engagement with archival recordings. After pursuing his BA and MA in Instrumental Music (Sitar) at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, he completed his PhD in Music at SOAS University of London and the British Library with a scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK. During his PhD, Christian participated in a four-month research collaboration between the British Library Sound Archive and the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (India). Subsequently, he worked as an Audio Cataloguer and Bengali Cataloguer at the British Library. After his PhD, he conducted three postdoctoral research projects on Bengali and Naga performing arts in India and the UK funded by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, and the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research (USA). Since 2022, Christian has collaborated with the Highland Institute in Kohima and supported it with community skills-building activities and as an advisor for establishing an audiovisual archive for field recordings from Nagaland and adjoining regions. In March 2023, he conducted a workshop on ethnographic fieldwork and field recording at Kohima Science College.
Christian received an AMMR seed money grant from MMRC to develop the research project „Songs of Resistance and Hope: Naga Musical Responses to Political Conflict“.