Here you will find news and updates about the research and researchers in LAURA.
The latest edition of the Aural Diversity Conference took place at the University of Salford, UK, on the 3rd ofSeptember 2026. It was a great success! Over 70 attendees joined us both online and in person. The event was organised collaboratively by LAURA staff and students, with students presenting their research and creative work in […]
LAURA PhD researcher Xsara Helmi will present Hospital Noises: Sonic Autobiography and the Embodied Experience of Autistic Auditory Perception an Editors’ Choice article published by Bristol University Press in the Journal of Creative Research Methods, at Science and Sensibility: Method Meets Art, a transdisciplinary conference taking place at the University of Oxford on 17–18 October […]
PhD researcher Xsara Helmi will join the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge as a visiting student during Lent term 2027, following her Michaelmas 2026 visit to Cambridge Digital Humanities. Building on her transdisciplinary research, she will focus on the project, The Numinous Ear: Autistic Listening and Aural Diversity as a Gateway to […]
Xsara Helmi is delighted to welcome Dr Roula-Maria Dib, PhD, FRSA, as an external advisor to her transdisciplinary arts-based research for her PhD in Music. Dr Dib is an award-winning literary scholar, poet, editor, and arts-based researcher whose work bridges literature, creative practice, Jungian psychology, and transdisciplinary research. She is the Founding Director of the […]
LAURA student Addie Beckwith is pleased to announce that she will presenting findings from her recent survey study at two conferences this Autumn. Firstly, she will be giving a presentation entitled “Everyday music listening, mental wellbeing, and aural diversity” at Musiconnex at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, in September. You can learn more about the […]
PhD researcher Xsara Helmi is pleased to welcome Dr Helen Kara as an external advisor to Xsara Helmi’s doctoral research at the University of Salford’s Leverhulme Trust-funded Aural Diversity Doctoral Research Hub. Helmi’s transdisciplinary arts-based practice-as-research PhD explores autistic listening, aural diversity, and embodied sonic experience through transdisciplinarity, music phenomenology, composition, poetic inquiry, film, arts practice and autoethnography. The research explores how transdisciplinary arts-based research […]
Ingrid Plum has had the opportunity to present her PhD work at recent events. These are NIME – New Instrument for Musical Expression as part of the student consortium, as well as the Neurodivergent Music Studies Conference. The abstract for the presented work follows: This project investigates the intersection of disciplines between auraldiversity, participatory choral […]
Presenting for her second consecutive year, LAURA PhD researcher Xsara Helmi shared the next stage of her research, The Numinous Ear: Autistic Listening and Aural Diversity as Sacred Art. Her presentation explored neurodivergent auditory perception as a potential site of relational and numinous consciousness. It challenged standard ideas about hearing, inviting the audience to consider how […]
Neesa Suncheuri Sunar has released her first survey, which seeks to learn about the musical experiences of musicians who have anauralia (auditory aphantasia) and/or other forms of aphantasia more broadly. Musicians are invited to take the survey here: https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/salford/survey-of-auditory-aphantasia-in-musicians Neesa is scheduled to lecture at several events in 2026, exploring different facets of the anauralia / […]
A Deaf-Led Inclusive Music Workshop at Manchester Deaf Centre Project Leader Noa Nishizawa Noa Nishizawa is a Manchester-based professional brass musician and artistic researcher with profound bilateral hearing loss. She is currently completing a PhD at the University of Salford’s Leverhulme Aural Diversity Doctoral Research Hub (LAURA), exploring how visual communication can enhance musical experiences […]