Dr. Sylvia Antonia Nannyonga-Tamusuza is Associate Professor of Music and Head of the Department of Performing Arts and Film at Makerere University. She is the Coordinator of the Ethnomusicology in Uganda Projects, and Founder and Curator of the Makerere University Klaus Wachsmann Audio-Visual Archive (MAKWAA).
Dr. Nannyonga-Tamusuza received her PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh, which she joined after obtaining her Masters of Arts in Music degree and Bachelor of Education (music and economics) from Makerere University in Uganda.
She has published on popular music, school music competitions, dance as music, sexuality in music and dance, politics and gender in music, the interface between ethnomusicology and music education, and identities in diasporic music, music repatriation and archiving. Her publications include the book Baakisimba: Gender in Music and Dance of the Baganda People of Uganda (Routledge, 2005), as well as many articles in journals and edited volumes. She is co-editor of Ethnomusicology in East Africa: Perspectives from Uganda and Beyond (Fountain 2012). Her most recent publications are two chapters: “Written Documentation of the Klaus Wachsmann Music Collection: Repatriating the Past to Present Indigenous Users in Uganda” in a book entitled: African Musics in Context Institutions, Culture, Identity (Fountain 2015) and “Performing Baakisimba during Mass: Negotiating, Contesting and Politicizing the ‘Sacred’ in the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda” in Re-Finding African Local Assets and City Environments: Governance, Research and Reflexivity, edited by Wakana Shiino et al. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA) (2016). She has presented more than seventy papers, lectures, workshops and performances internationally.
Nannyonga-Tamusuza has been honored with numerous fellowships, awards, scholarships and grants including, but not limited to: Dyason Fellowship, The University of Melbourne, Australia (2015); Society for Ethnomusicology International Travel Grant, 2015; Norwegian Program for Cooperation in Research and Education (NUFU) Grant (2007-2012) Bergen, Norway; NORAD Program in Arts and Cultural Education Grant (2006-2012) Bergen, Norway; African Guest Researcher Scholarship Images of and in Africa Program: The Nordic Africa Institute Uppsala, Sweden (2007); Guest Researcher in Ethnomusicology Fellowship Griegakademiet, Institutt for Musik (2004), University of Bergen, Norway Visiting Professor in Music Griegakademiet, Institutt for Musik, (2003) University of Bergen, Norway.
Dr. Nannyonga-Tamusuza sits on Boards of International organizations, including the Love and Care Family International; and a member of the Strategic Direction (2017-2022) Plan Committee for the Society for Ethnomusicology. She has coordinated numerous international collaborative projects in music, audio-visual archiving and dance with a number of international institutions, but not limited to Bagamoyo College of Arts (Tanzania), University of Pittsburgh (USA); University of California, Los Angeles (USA); University of Bergen (Norway), and Norwegian University College of Dance, Norway; The University of Melbourne (Australia); and York University, Toronto, Canada.
