Andrew Eisenberg

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Andrew J. Eisenberg is Assistant Professor of Music at NYU Abu Dhabi. A musical ethnographer and sound culture researcher specializing in urban Africa and the Indian Ocean world, he received his PhD in ethnomusicology from Columbia University in 2009, and carried out postdoctoral research between 2010 and 2013 as a participant in the European Research Council’s “Music, Digitization, Mediation” project led by Professor Georgina Born at Oxford University.

Much of Eisenberg’s published and forthcoming scholarship focuses on issues of voice, place, and identity on Kenya’s “Swahili coast.” In recent years, he has also been carrying out ethnographic research on the music recording industry in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Eisenberg has held teaching positions in music and anthropology at Northwestern University, Stony Brook University, and Bard College. At NYUAD he teaches seminar courses as well as performance practice in the area of Arab music.

The Conversation: Andrew Eisenberg on Nairobi's Still Alive Studio

Dissertation
The resonance of place: Vocalizing Swahili ethnicity in Mombasa, Kenya
Columbia Degrees: 
PhD, Ethnomusicology
2009