Principal Investigator

Lara Pearson is Professor for Ethnomusicology at the Institute of Musicology, University of Cologne. Her work explores gesture, vocalization and interaction in music-related contexts, with a focus on the performance and pedagogical practices of Karnatak (South Indian) vocalists and beatboxers. Her research is interdisciplinary, combining methods from gesture studies, ethnomusicology, computational musicology and human movement science. In addition to her work on music and gesture, she has published on coarticulation in music, cross-cultural aesthetics, music notation and concepts of improvisation. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the ViCom project Iconicity in co-singing gesture: the foundations of gesture-vocalization resemblance in beatboxing (IconS), and in addition is Principal Investigator of the project, SongGesture: Co-singing gesture and vocal performance across three musical traditions, funded by the Research Council of Norway.