Introducing the four new Fellows elected to the Learned Society of Wales in 2024 who work in language, literature and the history, theory and practice of the performing arts.
Professor Savyasaachi Jain FLSW
Reader, Journalism and DocumentaryCardiff University
Dr Jain teaches future journalists to play meaningful roles in their societies. He also leads an interdisciplinary project to develop the first Virtual Reality tool in the discipline that teaches creative decision making. He has obtained grants for projects worth over EUR 1.35 million and trained hundreds of professional journalists and filmmakers in about 30 countries. As a journalist, his work has had a direct international public impact.
Professor Andrew Lewis FLSW
Professor of Composition Bangor University
Andrew Lewis is a composer and Professor of Composition. His music is concerned with the materiality of sound, and often uses technology in its realisation and performance. His output ranges from ‘acousmatic’ music (heard solely on multiple loudspeakers) to orchestral and chamber works, often including technology. He is the founder of Electroacoustic WALES, which promotes and enables electroacoustic music composition and performance across Wales.
Professor Radhika Mohanram FLSW
Professor of Postcolonial StudiesCardiff University
Professor Mohanram is a leading postcolonial scholar, having written three monographs and edited five collections of essays on race, gender, and imperial rule, including SPAN, one of three major postcolonial studies journals in Australasia. The impact of the monographs is shown by the high number of citations they have in Goggle Scholar (1316). He also researches postcolonial trauma, a new and undeveloped area of studies. The impact of his funded research in Wales has been seen in public engagement and the museum sector.
Professor Clair Rowden FLSW
Professor of Music, Deputy Head of School of MusicCardiff University
Clair Rowden is Professor of Musicology in the School of Music, Cardiff University. Her research deals with nineteenth-century France, transnationalism and opera and musical theatre, its critical reception, stage production, dance, iconography and caricature.
Recent publications include Opera and Parody in Paris, 1860-1900 (Brepols, 2020) and the co-edited volume Carmen Abroad: Bizet’s Opera on the Global Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Royal Musical Association outstanding edited collection prize. The book is richly supplemented by the interactive website www.CarmenAbroad.org.
Professor Rowden is a public musicologist, committed to public engagement and knowledge exchange, and regularly writes programme notes for the Opéra-Comique, Paris, Wexford Festival Opera, Welsh National Opera, the Royal Opera House, Bilbao Opera and the Salzburg Festival.