Biography
Vanessa Paloma Elbaz is Research Associate of the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge working on the ERC funded project “Past and Present Musical Encounters Across the Strait of Gibraltar”. Dr. Elbaz was granted her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne's CERMOM research group of the INALCO with félicitation du jury and was nominated for the best dissertation of the year for INALCO in 2018. In 2012 she founded KHOYA: Jewish Morocco Sound Archive in Casablanca. Her work has been featured on PBS, NPR, PRI, the New York Times, the BBC, I24, France24 and Al Jazeera international amongst others. She is also an international performing artist of Moroccan Jewish repertoires.
Research
I am interested in the study of Jewish Mediterranean repertoires in movement through written and oral traces. I compare and contrast sacred, secular, masculine, feminine and private and public repertoires and their appearances throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Americas.