Dr Nina Baratti
National Museums Scotland Postdoctoral Fellow, December 2024 - September 2025
Home Institution: Harvard University
Nina Baratti is a music scholar, cultural producer, and activist whose research interests span music anthropology, critical organology, participatory action research, sound studies, and decolonial theory. She recently earned her PhD in Ethnomusicology from Harvard University, where her dissertation explored the role of music in shaping urban belonging in post-oil boom and post-war Angola. She specializes in musical practices in the Lusophone world, with extensive fieldwork experience in Italy, Portugal, the United States, and Angola.
Beyond her academic pursuits, Baratti has collaborated with various museums, foundations and collectives across Europe and Africa. In Angola, she played a pivotal role in establishing the Center for the Studies and Revalorization of Angolan Music (CERMA), a grassroots initiative based on the outskirts of Luanda. As a co-founder of Quintal – Laboratory of Art and Participatory Research, an Italy-based association, she is committed to fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and cross-pollination between art and research, particularly in the fields of ethnomusicology and anthropology, within the Portuguese-speaking world and beyond.
Project Title: From Documentary Objects to Creative Sources: Reactivating Jean Jenkins’ Sound Collection with(in) the Ethio-Scottish Diaspora
When Jean Jenkins’s field recordings from Ethiopia were first released in the 1960s, they were internationally praised for their quality and geographical scope yet criticized for lacking contextual information. While some critiques reflect the era’s biases, they also point to new research directions in exploring the Jean Jenkins collection at National Museums Scotland, centering the voices of Ethiopian communities.
As an advocate for archival preservation and creative museum collaborations, I propose to reactivate the Jean Jenkins collection through a community-centered approach that engages the Ethiopian communities in Scotland. The project has three objectives: (1) enhance the documentation of Jenkins’s sound archive, (2) share its contents across the Ethiopian diaspora and beyond, and (3) explore its creative potential through collaborative practices.
The project will unfold in distinct phases, combining ethnographic and practice-based research methods such as interviews, collective listening sessions, and workshops, culminating in the creation of an interdisciplinary performance. By bridging archival materials with contemporary cultural practices, the project seeks to critically reassess Jenkins’ legacy in ethnomusicology while proposing an innovative model for the recuperation and ‘resocialization’ of sound archives— reimagining them not merely as sites of knowledge retrieval but as dynamic catalysts for creative collaborations and meaningful engagement with diasporic communities.