Music researcher, author, and educator Catherine Grant has worked with musicians and communities in Australia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vanuatu on projects supporting the strength and sustainability of cultural expressions. She has authored over 60 journal articles, book chapters, books, and creative outputs in the fields of ethnomusicology, cultural heritage, and music education, including the book Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help (OUP, 2014) and award-winning co-edited volume Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures (OUP, 2016). Her collaborative book Sounding Good: Advancing Cultural Sustainability and Social Justice through Music is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. She has conducted consultancy and advisory work for Indigenous-led organisations and arts projects in Australia (2012-2014), Vanuatu (2018-ongoing), and Indonesia (2022-ongoing).
Catherine has been an invited keynote presenter on cultural heritage at international conferences and symposia in Austria, Australia, Cambodia, Finland, Nigeria, Norway, the UK, and the USA. Her work has featured in the Boston Globe, The Conversation, and The Australian, and on radio stations in the UK, USA, and Australia. Former Chair of the Australia-New Zealand Regional Committee of the International Council for Traditional Music, Catherine is recipient of a national Future Justice medal for her research, advocacy and activism on music endangerment and sustainability.
Recognising that cultural sustainability so often relies on conditions of social justice, in 2020 Catherine established Sounding Good, an international research partnership that aims to better understand this relationship, and to celebrate and promote the dual cultural and social contributions of musicians across the world.
