DrDiana Chester

BA (Mount Holyoke College), MA (Columbia University), PhD (University of Porto)

Diana Chester is a sound studies scholar, educator, and artist whose work produces critically influential studies, methods, and outputs that use sound to traverse disciplinary boundaries using feminist, anti-colonial, and post-anthropocentric approaches to thinking and making. Their work draws from sound studies, archival studies, and ethnography and relies on field recording and composition to explore sound in diverse contexts by putting research and practice in direct conversation-deepening the capacities of both. Current projects include the study of sound and culture focused on religion and the environment, the audio essay as a form of sonic scholarship, and new artistic methods and practices to sonify scientific data sets.

Chester's monograph Sonic Encounters: The Islamic Call to Prayer, places ethnographic research encounters in conversation with artistic practice and sonic intervention in the form of field recording, listening and soundmapping. It considers the role sound plays in our understanding and reconstruction of culture and religious traditions. The book embeds field recordings within each chapter via QR code, presenting the reader with nuanced sonic overviews of Islam through an analysis of thirteen Muslim communities, alongside contextualized religious and disciplinary information exploring practice, positionality, and method. The book makes the argument that sound is a critical tool for scholarly research and creative practice outputs on culture and religion. Chester's broader body of work includes solo exhibitions in 10 countries across four continents, numerous book chapters and peer reviewed journal articles, as well as sonic compositions, animation projects and audio essays.

Chester is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, and has held visiting academic positions at NYU's TISCH School of the Arts and Duke University. They have been commissioned by the Smithsonian in 2022 and 2023, been resident artist at Inter Arts Centre in Malmo, Sweden (2019), ArtsIceland in Ísafjörður, Iceland (2022), and Red Corner in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (2023), The Arctic Circle (2026), and Bundanon (2026). Chester has been the recipient of a Sydney Environment Institute Collaborative Fellowship, named a Powerhouse Research Fellow at the Museum of Arts and Applied Sciences, and holds a visiting scholar appointment at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Chester received a BA from Mount Holyoke College, an MA from Columbia University, and a PhD from the University of Porto.