Ryan Skinner

Ryan Skinner is a musical anthropologist who studies the expressive cultures and social worlds of contemporary Africa and its European diaspora, with extensive fieldwork conducted in Mali and Sweden. Specializing in the analytic and interpretive methods of cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology, Skinner’s research focuses on issues of popular culture, ethics and aesthetics, public piety, cultural policy, intellectual property, racial identity and politics, and new social movements in the African world. 

Skinner serves as director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of African American and African Studies and coordinates the Lectures in Musicology in the School of Music. He holds affiliations with the Departments of French and Italian and Germanic Languages and Literatures.