vanessa.thacker

Vanessa Thacker is a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto. She holds a M.A. in social anthropology from Queen's University Belfast and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Toronto. She is currently conducting ethnographic research on Irish sean-nós singing practices in Connemara, Ireland. Her research investigates the ways in which young sean-nós singers experience and interpret their voices as mediums of traditional culture. She explores how these experiences are affected by interactions between different generations of sean-nós singers in a range of performance and learning contexts.  Vanessa has presented papers at the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (2012) and the Niagara Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2012).