Rowan Hawitt is a PhD student in the Reid School of Music at the University of Edinburgh, funded by an Edinburgh College of Art Research Award.
Her research considers how contemporary folk musicians in Scotland and England conceptualise questions of time around the current environmental and climate crises. She received a Starred First-Class BA(Hons) in Music from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and an MPhil (Distinction) in Music from Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 2019 with the William Barclay Squire Essay Prize.
Rowan has published in the journals Ethnomusicology Forum, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, and IASPM Journal, and has presented her work at national and international conferences. These include the International Temporal Belongings Conference, the RMA-BFE Research Students’ Conference, the inaugural IASPM UK ECR Conference, the Responses in Music to Climate Change Conference, and the annual meetings of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and Musica Scotica.
She is a saxophonist, cellist, and singer and has performed across Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and the USA. She teaches instruments to young and old alike. Rowan also campaigns for social and climate justice, sits on the EDI Working Group for St Mary’s Music School, and has further research interests in species conservation and decolonial approaches to music and time.
