Angela Impey

Biography

 Angela is involved in three areas of research. The first examines the ways in which mobilities and gender intersect in the borderlands of South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland, where the landscape that has been dramatically reconfigured by transboundary conservation development This research builds on narratives inspired by the revival of the jews harp – instruments once performed by young Nguni women to accompany walking, but remembered now by elderly women only – and explores how meanings given to gendered mobilities through sound, song and performance inflect local experiences of land, spatiality and belonging.   A second project, entitled ‘Metre and Melody in Dinka Speech and Song’ was funded by the AHRC under the ‘Beyond Text’ programme: [Nilotic Prosody]. The project, which was conducted in collaboration with the Department of Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, focused on supra-segmental features in four Dinka dialect clusters in South Sudan, and examined how song systems interact with the unique combinations of tone, length and voice quality specifications of the language. The research also sought to better understand Dinka song-making as a historically, socially and politically embedded system both within South Sudan and the Dinka diaspora. Although the project was recently completed, Angela continues to work on the materials and is planning ongoing research in the region.

Research Interest

Gender Studies