Transgressive Sounds — Members
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Matthew P. Unger is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. His work encompasses the hermeneutics of criminal accusation, colonial legal imaginaries, sound studies, and ethnography/participant observation within the extreme metal community. He examines how predominant metaphors and symbols structure aesthetic, sonic, and legal imaginaries. He recently won SSHRC and FRQ grants for examining legal atmospheres and practices of accusation through archival analysis of the British Columbia colonial legacies. He is director of the Sensing Atmospheres Working group and established the Transgressive Sounds and Atmospheres curatorial research creation project. His continuing projects focus on sound and atmospheres, accusation and governance, contemporary social and legal theory. He is the author of Sound, Symbol, Sociality: The Aesthetics of Extreme Metal Music (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016). He is co-editor of Accusation: Creating Criminals (UBC Press, 2016) and Entryways to Criminal Justice: Accusation and Criminalization in Canada (UAP 2019).
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Hubert Gendron-Blais is a musician, author and researcher based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, working at the confluence of philosophy, sound/music and politics, with a particular attention to the concepts of affect, community and ecology. He recently curated the project Réverbérations d'une crise: une enquête sonore sur le logement à Montréal (Sounding the housing crisis) with a collective of tenants, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Gendron-Blais completed a postdoctoral fellowship in philosophy at McGill University and obtained a Ph.D. in humanities (research-creation) from Concordia University. His work has been published in Organised Sound, the Journal of Sonic Studies and ephemera, among others, and has been presented in conferences and festivals in various contexts in North America, Europe and Asia. In music, Gendron-Blais is the initiator of the Devenir-ensemble, a musical assemblage working in comprovisation from ambient sounds. He is also taken in a creative process with the experimental band ce qui nous traverse, while pursuing its own sound experimentations in "solo" (some of his pieces have figured on compilations by Jeunesse Cosmique, Mtl.Drone collective and the Dark Outside project). As a musician, Gendron-Blais has performed in festivals, conferences and concert series in various events across Canada, France, Belgium and the United States.
Links:
https://hubert-gendron-blais.org
https://www.reverberationscriselogement.org/en -
Chantale Laplante's artistic practice as a musician and composer is like an extended exploration of different musical genres involving instrumental, mixed medium, electroacoustic and live improvisation with the computer. Her performances and works have been programmed and premiered in the Americas, Europe and Asia. During the last few years, and through her doctorate studies (Ph. D. Études et pratiques des arts, Université du Québec à Montréal), she has deepened and extended her concept of the hyper listening body through a new reflection on the listening conditions in the context of an in situ approach and various format of concert-installations. In the end, the listener's body is placed at the center of her devices, where she seeks to offer a sensory experience while the work continues its march in a sound space anchored in the atmosphere of the place.
Links to latest productions:
Chambre d'écoute
Sculpting Spaces
From There to Hear
Intra-muros -
David Howes is Distinguished Research Professor (Anthropology) at Concordia University and Adjunct Professor (Law) at McGill. In 2024, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2025 he was awarded the Doctor of Letters (DLitt) degree by University of Oxford. Howes is a pioneer of the anthropology of the senses and has also made significant contributions to museum studies, and law and socio-legal studies. He has published 16 books and 11 thematic issues of journal to date, and directed numerous large-scale team research projects.description
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Martin Greve is a German ethnomusicologist based in Istanbul, Turkey. His doctoral thesis deals with the history of Turkish Art Music in the 20th century. His habilitation thesis is a study of Turkish music in Germany. Dr. Greve has taught various courses on ethnomusicology and Turkish music as well as offered cross-cultural training at several universities and music academies in Germany and Switzerland, including TU Berlin, FU Berlin, Universität Basel, Musikhochschule Köln, and Universität Heidelberg. He has written several booklets on Turkish and Korean life in Berlin on behalf of the Berlin municipal Integration Office (Berliner Integrationsbeauftragter). From 2005 – 2011 he was the coordinator of the Study Program of Turkish Music at the Rotterdam World Music Academy. From 2007 – 2011 he served as advisor to the Berlin Philharmonic concert hall for the concert program “Alla Turca.” From May 2011 – September 2018, Martin Greve was a research associate at the Orient-Institut Istanbul responsible for the research field Music in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Since December 2020, he is directing the DFG-funded research project entitled Music, Migration and Musical Expression at the Orient-Institut Istanbul.
Links:
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Burcu Yasin is a Ph.D. student and research assistant at Concordia University. Her research interests include urban atmospheres, sound studies, sensory studies, and music and performance studies. She is an active member of the Center for Sensory Studies and GEM Lab. Her work has been published or will be published in journals such as Terrabayt, Fugamundi, and Cogito.