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Ellen Waterman

Full Professor, Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada; Director, Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society in Canada

• Ph.D., M.A. (U. California, San Diego), B. Mus. (U. Manitoba)
• Email Ellen Waterman

Ellen Waterman holds the Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada and is a Professor in the School for Studies in Art and Culture at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Her interdisciplinary research in music and sound studies engages with improvisation, performance ecologies, listening, d/Deaf and disability-led music, community-engaged research-creation methodologies, and social change in Canada. Her early work examined the environmental music dramas of R. Murray Schafer, and she is currently editing a collection of critical essays re-examining his legacy across acoustic ecology, environmental composition, and experimental music pedagogy. Waterman is also active as a flutist/vocalist specializing in creative improvisation, a practice that informs her research-creation. Her instructional score  (2022), commissioned by New Adventures in Sound Art, explores an expanded concept of listening across different sensory modalities. In 2021, Waterman founded the , dedicated to exploring the complex and diverse roles that music and sonic arts play in shaping Canadian society. She is currently establishing the CFI-funded Sonic Arts Participation Lab, an inclusive and accessible audiovisual facility for cultural listening and storytelling.

Waterman’s books include four edited collections. Sonic Geography Imagined and Remembered (Penumbra 2002) addresses the relationship between sound and environment in an international context. Art of Immersive Soundscapes (with Pauline Minevich, Regina 2013) explores a fascinating range of place-based sonic arts projects and includes a multi-channel DVD. Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity (with Gillian Siddall, Duke 2016) explores embodiment and power in improvisation. She is a member of the editorial collective for  (open access, Music and Social Justice Series, U Michigan Press 2023). In the 2000s Waterman conducted Sounds Provocative, a cross-Canada comparative ethnography on experimental music performance. Her CDs include  with James Harley for improvisational flutes/voice, sound processing, and multichannel diffusion. Waterman has been a core member of the  since its inception and was a founding co-editor of the peer reviewed journal .

Waterman’s teaching includes Music in Canada, and graduate seminars in the Music and Culture MA program and the Cultural Mediations PhD program. She supervises graduate students in the Music and Culture MA and the Cultural Mediations PhD programs, and postdoctoral fellows through the Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society in Canada.

Websites

Books and Special Journal Issues (selected)

Improvising Across Abilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument. 2024. Edited by the AUMI Editorial Collective: Thomas Ciufo, Abbey Dvorak, Kip Haaheim, IONE, Leaf Miller, Ray Mizumura-Pence, Jesse Stewart, John Sullivan, Sherrie Tucker, Ellen Waterman, Ranita Wilks, 229-246. Music and Social Justice Series. University of Michigan Press. 

Performing Practice-Based Research. Edited by Peter Dickinson and Ellen Waterman. Double special issue of Performance Matters 9, nos. 1-2, 2023. 

Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound and Subjectivity. Edited by Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman.  Duke University Press, 2016. 

Art of Immersive Soundscapes. Edited by Pauline Minevich and Ellen Waterman; DVD curated by James Harley. University of Regina Press, 2013. 

Sonic Geography Imagined and Remembered. Edited by Ellen Waterman. Peterborough: Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Native Studies; and Manotick: Penumbra Press, 2002. 

Articles and Book Chapters (selected)

Waterman, Ellen and Gale Franklin. 2025. “Developing a Community-Engaged Research-Creation Methodology through the Resonance Project.”&�Բ�����;MUSICultures, 52, 255–284. Retrieved from 

Waterman, Ellen, Erin Parkes, Jesse Stewart, and Geneviève Cimon. 2025. “Expanding the Music Circle through Networked Improvisation in an Inclusive Ensemble.”&�Բ�����;International Journal for Music Education. 

Waterman, Ellen. “Bodily Listening in Place.” 2024. In A Year of Deep Listening: 365 Text Scores for Pauline Oliveros, edited by Stephanie Loveless. Terra Nova Press.

Cvetkovich, Ann, Ellen Waterman, and Deborah Wong. 2024. “Revisiting Hungry Listening: A Conversation with Ann Cvetkovich, Ellen Waterman, and Deborah Wong.”&�Բ�����;Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, special double issue “Theories and Practices of Insurgent Listening” 5, no. 4: 385-398.

Stewart, Jesse, and Ellen Waterman. 2024.“We Are All Musicians: A Dialogue on Improvisation Pedagogy and Social Justice.” In The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies of Adaptive Performance, Social Engagement, and Creative Practice, edited by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Lommano, 173-194. Temple University Press.

Waterman, Ellen, Laurel Forshaw, Gillian Siddall, Henry Lowengard, Gale Franklin, Teresa Connors, and Karen Berglander. 2024. “I am Here: AUMI Sings and Choral Participation.” In Improvising Across Abilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument, edited by the AUMI Editorial Collective, Music and Social Justice Series, 229-246. University of Michigan Press. 

Bath, Paula, Tiphaine Girault, and Ellen Waterman. 2023. “Reflecting on Bodily Listening in Place: An Intercultural and Intersensory Research-Creation Project.” Special Issue on Performing Practice-based Research. Performance Matters 9, no. 1-2: 139-154. 

Waterman, Ellen. 2022. “Reorienting Listening through Bodily Listening in Place.”&�Բ�����;English Studies Canada 46, no. 2–3 (June/September 2020): 61–66.

Waterman, Ellen. 2020 [1998]. “Una perspectiva literaria y feminista de Cassandra’s Dream Song de Brian Ferneyhough.” In Musica y mujeres:  genero y poder, edited by Marisa Manchado Torres, 2nd Edition, 191-209. Translated by Jane Rigler and Rafael Liñán. Madrid: Librer = Eda de mujeres. [Originally “Cassandra’s Dream Song: A Literary/Feminist Perspective.”&�Բ�����;Perspectives of New Music, 32, no. 2, summer 1994.]

Jacque, Kendra, and Ellen Waterman. 2019. “The Long and Narrow Road: An Inuit Student’s Journey Through Post-Secondary Music.”&�Բ�����;Intersections: Journal of Canadian Music 39, no. 1: 123–136. 

Waterman, Ellen. 2019. “Performance Studies and Critical Improvisation Studies in Ethnomusicology: Understanding Music and Culture through Situated Practice.” In Theory for Ethnomusicology: Histories, Conversations, Insights, 2nd Edition, edited by Harris Berger and Ruth Stone, 141-175. Routledge.

Finch, Mark, Susan LeMessurier-Quinn, and Ellen Waterman. 2016. “Improvisation, Adaptability, and Collaboration: Using AUMI in Community Music Therapy.”&�Բ�����;Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy 16, no. 3. 

Waterman, Ellen. 2016. “Witnessing Music from the New Wilderness.” Special issue on Music and Ecology. Contemporary Music Review 35, no. 3: 336-361. 

Waterman, Ellen. 2016. “Improvisation and the Audibility of Difference: Safa, Canadian Multiculturalism, and the Politics of Recognition.” In Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound and Subjectivity, edited by Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman, 283-306. Duke University Press.

Boyle, Alice and Ellen Waterman. 2015. “The Ecology of Musical Performance: Towards a Robust Methodology.”&�Բ�����;In Current Directions in Ecomusicology, edited by Aaron Allen and Kevin Dawe, 25-39. Routledge.

Waterman, Ellen. 2014. “Trust and Risk in Improvisation: Opening Statements.”&�Բ�����;Improvisation Studies Reader: Spontaneous Acts, edited by Rebecca Caines and Ajay Heble, 59-62. Routledge.

Smith, Julie Dawn, and Ellen Waterman. 2013. “Listening Trust: The Everyday Politics of George Lewis’s ‘Dream Team.’” In People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz is Now!, edited by Ajay Heble and Rob Wallace, 59-87. Duke University Press.

Waterman, Ellen. 2013. “Send and Receive: Technology, Embodiment and the Social in Sound Art.” In The Art of Immersive Soundscapes, edited by Pauline Minevich and Ellen Waterman, with DVD curated by James Harley, 111-127. University of Regina Press.

Waterman, Ellen. 2008. “Naked Intimacy: Eroticism, Improvisation, and Gender.”&�Բ�����; Critical Studies in Improvisation/Etudes critique en improvisation 4, no. 2. 

Waterman, Ellen. 2007. “Radio Bodies: Discourse, Performance, Resonance.” In Radio Territories, edited by Brandon LaBelle and Erik Granly Jensen, 118-153. Errant Bodies Press. 

Waterman, Ellen. 2006. “Purposeful Play: Women Radiomakers in Community-Based Campus Radio in Canada.”&�Բ�����;Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal 30, no. 2: 76-87.