Elizabeth Lawrensen, PhD Student

Elizabeth Lawrensen is a PhD candidate in Critical Music Studies at Stony Brook University, where she researches sound, politics, and hauntology in contemporary Hong Kong & Southeast Asia. Her dissertation explores how traces of sound, silence, and spectrality shape collective memory and identity in postcolonial Hong Kong. More broadly, her work engages with questions of sound and conflict, Chinese diaspora, popular music, and the aesthetics of imitation and spectacle.

Her recent projects and presentations have examined topics such as Shen Yun Performing Arts as political performance, the body as copy in Jamie xx’s Gosh, and satanic panic in Lil Nas X’s Montero. She has presented her research at conferences including the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Yale Graduate Music Symposium and was a 2025 SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium Fellow and 2024–25 Edward Giuliano Global Dissertation Fellow.

In addition to her research, Lawrensen is an experienced educator and musician. She has taught courses in popular music, music history, music & fashion, and global sound cultures at Stony Brook University, Hunter College, and The New School. Before graduate study, she worked as a K–12 music educator and choir director and remains active in the DIY music community through her synth-pop project Dalahäst. She holds an M.M. in Music Education from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a B.A. in Music from Covenant College.