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Research Associate, University of Cambridge

Katia Chornik is Impact Development Manager at Kingston University, leading on research impact for the Kingston School of Art and the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education. She is also Research Associate at the University of Cambridge's Centre of Latin American Studies. Her research expertise focuses on 20th- and 21st- century Latin American cultural history, particularly in the areas of music, memory and human rights, and the writings of Alejo Carpentier. She directs and edits the bilingual digital platform Cantos Cautivos / Captive Songs (www.cantoscautivos.org), which compiles testimonies on musical experiences in political detention centres in Chile under Pinochet's dictatorship, as well as music composed, performed and listened to in these contexts. She first developed this project in partnership with Chile's Museum of Memory and Human Rights, during her Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Manchester. Her project, hailed as "an extraordinary digital archive" by The New Yorker critic Alex Ross, was featured in the British Museum's exhibition I Object: Ian Hislop's Search for Dissent (2018-19).

Katia is currently writing her second book, Captive Songs: Music and Political Detention in Pinochet's Chile, 1973-1990, under contract with Oxford University Press. Her first book, Alejo Carpentier and the Musical Text, was published by MHRA-Maney/ Routledge in 2015. She has also published widely on Latin American topics in peer-reviewed journals and media outlets, including the BBC, The Guardian and The Economist. Outside academia, she worked as a Commissioning Officer in the UK governmental sector, and as a violinist with the Santiago Philharmonic Orchestra, Chile. She holds degrees from the Catholic University of Chile, the Royal Academy of Music, the University of London and The Open University. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Experience

  • 2020–present
    Senior Research Impact Coordinator, University of Cambridge