About
Ethnomusicologist, popular music scholar, arts-in-health activator
From Indonesia to Greater Boston, Dr. Moore's research has been driven by ethnomusicological inquiry and anthropological methods to understand the role of musicians and artists in advancing social and environmental justice and affecting individual and collective health and wellbeing. Her latest work appears in the edited volumes Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music (Cornell University Press), At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice (Indiana University Press), The Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership, the Cambridge Companion to the Electric Guitar, and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Global Music Industry Studies. Her writing for a general audience has appeared in the Boston Art Review, Musicology Now, and several Indonesian publications, including Inside Indonesia, Hello Bali, Jakartabeat, Jakarta Java Kini, and the nation’s only feminist media source, Magdalene.
In The Rise of Rock Gods in the Last Paradise, Dr. Moore’s forthcoming book, the music and activism of Balinese rock band Navicula provide the narrative framework for reckoning with an island, nation, and world in an ecological crisis. Based on Moore's fifteen years of activist research and professional collaboration, the book is equal parts a music ethnography, band biography, and decolonial critique positioning the complex history and present state of Bali’s cultural and environmental exploitation within the larger contexts of a) scholarship on Balinese music and culture spanning more than 100 years, b) Indonesia’s decolonization and nation-building projects, connecting Bali (as tourism commodity) to other hotspots for social injustice and resource extractivism, and c) the global interconnections of dissident rock music and climate risk.
In March 2025, Dr. Moore joined the University of Huddersfield as a Senior Research Fellow for the Leverhulme-funded Amplification Project in the Department of Media, Humanities and the Arts.This 5-year collaborative research project investigates the transformative role of sound amplification in musical experience, in bridging public and private spaces, and in shaping our history, culture, economics, and politics. In her individual research, Dr. Moore will undertake a study of amplified activism, or the settings, tactics, and technologies of amplification that enable activists of all kinds to communicate, persuade, mobilize, disrupt, and, in rare but powerful instances, undermine systems of oppression. She is particularly interested in how devices like the megaphone serve not only as practical tools in middle- and large-scale street protests—for claiming public space, navigating crowds, and projecting the protester’s voice and message—but also as aesthetic instruments shaping the sonic dynamics of protest through chant and song.
From 2020-2025, Dr. Moore was the co-principal investigator, with arts and reparations activist Aziza Robinson-Goodnight, for a multi-year community-engaged research study on art, race, and public health equity in the City of Boston. In 2022, she co-founded, with Dr. Francesca Inglese and the Transformative Culture Project, a high school songwriting, recording, and storytelling program called Beyond Creative @ NU. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses for more than seven years on subjects such as the global music industries, music and social justice, music marketing, music and health, and arts leadership.
Dr. Moore's career in the public and private sectors has taken her across the globe, from international concert and festival production to band and tour management, arts administration, and cultural diplomacy. She is the co-founder, with Kartika Jahja, and former project advisor for Bersama Project, a registered Indonesian nonprofit confronting violence against women and LGBTQ+ young people through music and the arts. She previously served as the senior manager for the U.S. Embassy cultural center in Jakarta, director and production manager for the international yoga, dance, and music festival BaliSpirit, and program manager for the HIV/AIDS education nonprofit AYO!.
In The Rise of Rock Gods in the Last Paradise, Dr. Moore’s forthcoming book, the music and activism of Balinese rock band Navicula provide the narrative framework for reckoning with an island, nation, and world in an ecological crisis. Based on Moore's fifteen years of activist research and professional collaboration, the book is equal parts a music ethnography, band biography, and decolonial critique positioning the complex history and present state of Bali’s cultural and environmental exploitation within the larger contexts of a) scholarship on Balinese music and culture spanning more than 100 years, b) Indonesia’s decolonization and nation-building projects, connecting Bali (as tourism commodity) to other hotspots for social injustice and resource extractivism, and c) the global interconnections of dissident rock music and climate risk.
In March 2025, Dr. Moore joined the University of Huddersfield as a Senior Research Fellow for the Leverhulme-funded Amplification Project in the Department of Media, Humanities and the Arts.This 5-year collaborative research project investigates the transformative role of sound amplification in musical experience, in bridging public and private spaces, and in shaping our history, culture, economics, and politics. In her individual research, Dr. Moore will undertake a study of amplified activism, or the settings, tactics, and technologies of amplification that enable activists of all kinds to communicate, persuade, mobilize, disrupt, and, in rare but powerful instances, undermine systems of oppression. She is particularly interested in how devices like the megaphone serve not only as practical tools in middle- and large-scale street protests—for claiming public space, navigating crowds, and projecting the protester’s voice and message—but also as aesthetic instruments shaping the sonic dynamics of protest through chant and song.
From 2020-2025, Dr. Moore was the co-principal investigator, with arts and reparations activist Aziza Robinson-Goodnight, for a multi-year community-engaged research study on art, race, and public health equity in the City of Boston. In 2022, she co-founded, with Dr. Francesca Inglese and the Transformative Culture Project, a high school songwriting, recording, and storytelling program called Beyond Creative @ NU. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses for more than seven years on subjects such as the global music industries, music and social justice, music marketing, music and health, and arts leadership.
Dr. Moore's career in the public and private sectors has taken her across the globe, from international concert and festival production to band and tour management, arts administration, and cultural diplomacy. She is the co-founder, with Kartika Jahja, and former project advisor for Bersama Project, a registered Indonesian nonprofit confronting violence against women and LGBTQ+ young people through music and the arts. She previously served as the senior manager for the U.S. Embassy cultural center in Jakarta, director and production manager for the international yoga, dance, and music festival BaliSpirit, and program manager for the HIV/AIDS education nonprofit AYO!.