What was your project about?

I studied popular songs in Shanghai from the 1920s through the 1940s, a period in which commercial music flourished amid profound social and political change. I explored how these songs reflected the city’s cosmopolitan musical culture and evolving cultural identity, and also considered their significance within the broader history of Chinese popular music. The project resulted in a website that introduces this music, its performers, its composers, and its historical context to a broad audience, shanghaisong.org.

Where are you now and how did your project shape the work you’re currently doing?

I am currently a PhD student in musicology at Princeton University, researching U.S. military pop music ensembles and their impact on the home front. My experience working on the Shanghai Song website as a Cykler Song Scholar sparked her passion for public-facing digital humanities projects. I now serve as the Project Manager of Music Theory in the Plural, which will be an open-source web resource for music-theoretical texts from historically underrepresented languages and communities.