These past couple of months have seen Aotearoa (and the world) battle an unseen enemy and change our way of life. For graduates around the country, these new challenges have meant changes to research processes, capabilities and more. As we have moved into level two and some form of normalcy returns, what better way to introduce another fabulous graduate student and their journey so far!
Lillian Brown comes to us from Oregon, USA, and is doing a PhD at Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato (University of Waikato) under the supervision of Dr Fiona McCormack and Dr Fraser Macdonald.
Tell us about yourself
Lillian Brown
I am a non-binary musician from Eugene, Oregon USA. When I was fourteen I wanted to play drums. Then two things happened. First, the band teacher at my public school told me that drums were for boys and that I would be much happier with a clarinet. Second, my older brother, who played in bands, told me that girls could not play rock n roll. Despite many fine examples to the contrary, I believed these desperately misinformed male authority figures for sixteen years. In January 2020, I finally bought myself a bloody drum kit.
Even though it took me ages to pick up drums again, music has always been an important part of my life. Between waitressing shifts, I took piano lessons in my early twenties. As a graduate student in America, I joined a local karaoke league (it was a bracketed, team-based competition with weekly themes. At the end of the season, winners took home a ca$h prize). When I was twenty-six, I got my first synthesizer. Then my music interests got really wild. I play a lot of different types of music now. The weirder the better in my opinion.
My journey as an anthropologist started at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, where I received my BA in 2011. Dr. Fiona McCormack was my lecturer there. In 2012, I started a PhD program at an American university. Due to insurmountable internal politics within that university, I left with an MA in Anthropology in 2017. Shortly after, I started a new doctorate program at the University of Waikato in February 2018. I am extraordinarily happy with my decision to study in Aotearoa.
What drew you to anthropology?
As an undergraduate, I found that anthropology classes were more critically engaged with questions about social inequity and cultural politics than any other discipline. Decolonizing discourses continue to be our greatest strength at this time. I genuinely hope that future generations of anthropologists will uphold burgeoning critiques of race, class, and gender disparities within the discipline itself and across academia as a whole.
What are you working on?
Through my research, Affective Labour, Music, and Gender in Aotearoa, I work with local musicians from primarily Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) to better understand how experiences with gender influence their participation in the Aotearoa music industry. In semi-structured interviews, I use a life story approach combined with questions about the current state of gendered politics in music production. Then I ask participants to share their visions for a more equitable industry. Simultaneously, I serve on the Kaitiaki for Girls Rock Aotearoa. GRA is a non-profit organization that runs two annual holiday programs for female, transgender, and non-binary youth in Tāmaki Makaurau and Pōneke (Wellington). The holiday programs promote empowerment through music education.
Theoretically, I examine the political economy of gender in the Aotearoa music industry. I am particularly interested in the specific labour practices that musicians engage with to contend with, confront, or challenge social inequity in music production. Affective labour refers to labour practices which produce social relations. Opponents of this concept contend that ‘affective labour’ constructs a false-binary opposition between material and immaterial labour practices. In my research, I ask whether a non-binary and multisensorial approach to gender-based activism in music production provides a more nuanced lens on affective labour as a critical component to economic anthropology.
How have you found life as a graduate student?
I have had a complicated experience with graduate school. Like I said, I initially enrolled in a PhD program at another university in the USA. Over time, I become more and more uncomfortable with the politics of that institution. White supremacists would regularly gather on campus with university protection. In contrast, anti-fascist protestors who rallied at the same events faced criminal arrest. In another example, I was sexually harassed by one of my language instructors. At the time, I had a federal grant which was contingent upon my completion of that language course. The only supervisor I ever told about the harassment strongly encouraged me to endure my instructor’s abuse. In all fairness, she was concerned that I would sacrifice my credibility as a federally funded researcher if I reported the incident.
Life as a graduate student at the University of Waikato has been remarkably positive. My supervisors are supportive, the faculty are far more aligned with my politics as a queer, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist activist researcher.
What are your current influences?
My current influences are Jacinta Forde and Sharayne Bennett. I am truly honoured to study with these brilliant scholars.
To all graduate students around the country…
Kia kaha, Kia māia, Kia manawanui
