Translating Improvisation | Team
Team

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The AHRC-funded project, Into the Key of Law: Transposing Musical Improvisation. The Case of Child Protection in Northern Ireland, was led by:
Dr. Sara Ramshaw, University of Victoria, Faculty of Law
Dr. Paul Stapleton, Queen’s University Belfast, Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC)

Biographies:
Dr. Sara Ramshaw is a
Professor of Law and Director of Cultural, Social and Political Thought (CSPT) at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. This appointment follows previous positions at the University of Exeter (England) and Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland). Sara has a BA (Hons) from the University of Toronto, a LLB and LLM from the University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty of Law. She clerked at the Ontario Court of Justice (General Division) and was called to the Bar of the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2000. Sara worked for the Ministry of the Attorney General at the Superior Court of Justice, Family Court in Toronto before commencing postgraduate studies at the University of London (Birkbeck College) in England. Her doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of the late Peter Fitzpatrick, examined the legal regulation of jazz musicians in New York City (1940-1967) through the lens of poststructural theory informed by feminism, critical race theory and critical improvisation studies. During the 2008-9 academic year, Sara was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Improvisation, Community and Social Practice (ICASP) project in Montreal. Her first monograph, Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore, published by Routledge in 2013, was nominated for the 2014 Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Hart Book Prize.


Dr. Paul Stapleton is a Professor of Music at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and an improviser, sound artist and writer originally from Southern California. Paul joined QUB’s Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) in 2007, where he has been teaching and supervising MA & PhD research in performance technologies, interaction design and site-specific art. Paul also designs and performs with a variety of modular metallic sound sculptures, custom made electronics, found objects and electric guitars in locations ranging from experimental music clubs in Berlin to remote beaches on Vancouver Island. He is involved in a diverse range of artistic collaborations including: improvisation duos with saxophonist Simon Rose & double-bassist Adam Pultz Melbye, networked installation design and performance with Tom Davis, and the co-direction of QUBe experimental music ensemble with Steve Davis.


Research Fellow:

Adan
Dr. Adnan Marquez-Borbon
Saxophonist, improviser, computer musician, composer, and sound artist. He received his PhD at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. His research mainly focuses on the development of skill with digital musical interactions and how this process informs the design of new musical devices. His music involves improvisation and electronic manipulation of sounds in real-time. Influenced by jazz, free improvisation, western European concert music, electronic and ethnic musics, his improvisations and compositions attempt to synthesize these diverse elements into a very personal style. His first recording, “The Paradox of Continuity”, was released in 2007 under the Californian label, Circumvention Music. As a producer under the alias Duplex Helix, he released the “Bonds EP” in 2011. He has participated in numerous projects with musicians from California, Mexico and Northern Ireland. He is a founder of the Mexican improvisation collective Generacion Espontanea and the multimedia collective N0R73 (now OpenL4B.Norte_Hackerspace). As an educator, he has been an instructor of saxophone for almost ten years and has additionally taught digital audio, musical acoustics, music perception and cognition courses. Currently, he is a professor at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) where he teaches a number of subjects involving the use of computers and technological tools for musical and artistic applications.


Research Assistants:

Kathryn
Dr. Kathryn McNeilly is a Lecturer at the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests intersect the areas of critical legal studies, human rights and feminist philosophy. She is particularly interested in critiques of human rights and gendered/queer engagements with the theoretical underpinnings, politics and practice of human rights. To date her work has been published in journals such as Feminist Legal Studies, the Australian Feminist Law Journal and the International Journal of Human Rights. Kathryn’s work has been presented widely including as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies at the University of British Columbia, funded by the County Antrim Grand Jury Bursary, and in conversation with Professor Judith Butler at LSE School of Law in February 2015.

Seamus Mulholland LL.B (Hons), Barrister-at-Law graduated with a first in law from the Queen’s University of Belfast in 2011. He was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in Michaelmas term 2012 and practises law (1.0 FTE) alongside academic life (0.4 FTE). In respect of legal practice, since 2019, he has held a delegated authority from the Director of Public Prosecutions under section 36(1) of the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002. At university, and latterly in legal practice, he has been involved in researching child protection law for the purpose of legal opinions and in-court oral and written advocacy. His co-existing in academia and practice brings to the project an appreciation of their pre-existing shared language and knowledge exchanges.


Research Assistant and Archivist:

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Matilde Meireles is a sound artist and researcher who makes use of field recordings to compose site-oriented projects. Her work has a multi-sensorial and multi-perspective critical approach to site, where Matilde investigates the potential of listening across spectrums as ways to encounter and articulate a plural experience of the world — human and otherwise. These range from the inner architectures of reeds and complex water ecologies, to the local neighbourhood, resonances in everyday objects, and the architecture of radio signals. She often highlights collaboration and participation as catalysts for a shared understanding of place, developing project-based or long-term collaborations. Her work is presented regularly in the form of concerts, installations, releases, and community-based projects.

She holds a PhD in Sonic Arts from the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Oxford in the project Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism (SONCITIES).