North Carolina State University

Dr. Alison E Arnold is an adjunct professor of Music and Arts Studies at North Carolina State University. She completed her Bachelors degree in music at the University of Liverpool, England, and her Masters and Ph.D. in Musicology with a concentration in Ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was awarded a junior fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies to carry out her doctoral research in India on the history of popular Hindi film song (Bollywood).

As an ethnomusicologist, her recent research focuses on Vietnamese Montagnard music in North Carolina. She has presented conference papers on Montagnard music, music of South Asia, and musical traditions of Indian Americans, for the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music, the Association for Technology in Music Instruction, Cultural Diversity in Music Education (CDIME), the Association for Asian Studies, and the South Asia Conference in Madison.
She has published articles on these topics in Popular Music, Asian Music, and elsewhere. She edited the South Asia Volume of “The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music” (2000), and worked as an editor on “The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians” (1980) in London before moving to the United States. She served as Vice President and President of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Southeast and Caribbean Chapter 2002-2004, organizing a regional conference at North Carolina State University in 2004.

Dr. Arnold joined the music faculty at North Carolina State University in fall 2000, and currently teaches courses on Understanding Music (Global Perspectives), Music of Asia, and Arts and Cross-Cultural
Contacts. She has taught World Music, American Music, and Music Appreciation at The Colorado College, Penn State University at Abington, Drexel University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has taught for the FYI (First Year Inquiry) program at NCSU since 2002, and together with colleague Dr. Jonathan Kramer was nominated for the 2007-2008 Gertrude Cox award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching and Learning with Technology at NCSU. She is currently writing an online Music textbook with associate Dr. Jonathan Kramer titled (provisionally) "What In The World Is Music?"