Carolina Santamaria Delgado (PhD 06, ethnomusicology) sent us photos from a conference on interdisciplinary music that she co-organized: Primer Encuentro Interdisplinario de Investigaciones Musicales (First Interdisciplinary Encounter of Music Research). She is pictured above with Dr. Daniel Sheehy from the Smithsonian Institution, one of the keynote speakers. A Professor of music at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá Colombia, Carolina writes,
“I'm very happy in Bogotá, and working at the Universidad Javeriana's Music Department. I have been pretty busy over the last two years since I came back, taking care of several courses as well as organizing a national music conference that was held last May. That was a real challenge, actually at some point I thought it was easier to get a PhD than to put together a conference!”
(The second photo shows Dr. Mario Ortiz of Catholic University of America at the podium. Carolina is seated at the table.)
Primer Encuentro Interdisplinario de Investigaciones Musicales was sponsored by several leading Colombian institutions including the Colombian Association of Arts Faculties and Programs (ACOFARTES), Banco de la República (Colombia's National Bank), and the Ministerio de Cultura. Carolina co-organized the the conference with Fernando Barona, from Banco de la República. The event took place at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango and included panels with research papers, the screening of documentaries, several book presentations, and keynote presentations. As if organizing a major international conference weren't enough to keep anyone busy, Carolina also published an article in the most recent issue of Latin American Music Review. "El bambuco, los saberes mestizos y la academia: un análisis histórico de la persistencia de la colonialidad en los estudios musicales latinoamericanos," (Bambuco, mestizo knowledge, and academia: a historical analysis of coloniality's continuity in today's Latin American music studies) appears in Volume 28, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2007. In Fall of 2008 she will be Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Texas.