Rate My Professor Linda Barwick

About Linda

Emeritus Professor Linda Barwick is a leading musicologist affiliated with the University of Sydney's Sydney Conservatorium of Music in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She earned her BA (Honours) in 1980 and PhD in 1986 from Flinders University, her doctoral research examining critical perspectives on oral song performance. Early in her career, she worked at the University of New England alongside Catherine Ellis, researching Australian Indigenous music with a focus on Aboriginal women's roles in song traditions.

Barwick specializes in Australian First Nations musics, immigrant musics, and digital humanities, particularly archiving audiovisual recordings of endangered cultural performances. She co-founded the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) in 2003 and serves as Chair of its Steering Committee. Her involvement in multiple Australian Research Council projects supports song and language revitalization through collaborations with Indigenous researchers and communities. She has supervised PhD and MA students on subjects including Warlpiri song transmission, all-women's bands, and Paakantyi teaching resources.

Key publications feature edited volumes such as Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork (2006), For the Sake of a Song: Wangga Songmen and Their Repertoires (2012, with Allan Marett and Lysbeth Ford), Research, Records and Responsibility: Ten Years of PARADISEC (2015, with Amanda Harris and Nicholas Thieberger), and Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond (2020, with Jenny Green and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel). A festschrift, Keeping Time: Dialogues on Music and Archives in Honour of Linda Barwick (2024, edited by Nick Thieberger et al.), highlights her influence. Barwick's honors include Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA, 2014), Member of the Order of Australia (AM, 2023), and the Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award (2024). Her leadership in ethical archiving and repatriation has shaped academic practices in ethnomusicology and cultural preservation.