RESEARCH
Lara is currently undertaking a PhD at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s University Belfast, under the supervision of Professor Pedro Rebelo and as the recipient of a Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Drawing upon the situational knowledges of practice research, her PhD thesis investigates the capacity of sound to observe and give voice to changing ecosystems: specifically, the Northern Irish peatlands and the ‘singing’ sand dunes of the Rub’ al Khali desert (UAE). This research is grounded in materials gathered through in-situ fieldwork, from which her compositional practice explores different soundings of these environments. The new insights that these methods of sonic practice yield open dialogue between environmental humanities and sciences, interrogating the need for different situated sensings of the ‘Anthropocene’. From the wetlands to the drylands, her PhD proposes strategies for the doing of sound, (or cultivating particular modes of sounding through practice), asking how we can listen through colonial legacies and extractivist paradigms to present day relations between humans and nonhuman environments, and reflecting on how both sounding and refusing to sound environments shape relations of power, difference, and resistance.
Previously, Lara was at St John’s College, Cambridge, where she read for her undergraduate degree in Music, achieving a First, and MPhil in Composition, which was awarded with Distinction. Her Master's thesis at the University of Cambridge was an exploration of architecture and acoustics through composition, looking at how spaces manifest sound, and how music creates and shapes space through its acoustic properties and cultural codes.
OUTPUTS AND ACTIVITIES
Research Projects
‘SPATIALITY IN THE AUDIOVISUAL’ , LED BY UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH
(5TH MARCH 2022 - PRESENT)
INVITED PARTICIPANT
As part of the AHRC funded project “Audiovisual Space: Recontextualising Sound / Image Media”, two Research Networking & Development events have been hosted at the SOUND/IMAGE Research Group in Greenwich, inviting early career researchers and emerging scholars to share disciplinary perspectives on spatiality, stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration and seek to foster new research agendas on spatiality and practice. The project brings together fellow researchers within audiovisual and contiguous fields to work collaboratively on projects and publications during the next year.
Conference presentations and proceedings
PETROCULTURES 2024 – OIL CITIES AND POST-OIL CITIES (LOS ANGELES, MAY 15-18, 2024)
CONFERENCE PANEL
Panel title: Sites of Non-Spectacular Resistance to Ecological Exhaustion: Minor Cities, Extractive Landscapes, and the Expansive Footprint of Energy Consumption
Participants:
Geneva Foster Gluck (Independent Scholar)
Penélope Plaza (University of Reading)
David Pratten (University of Oxford)
Gianfranco Selgas (University College London)
Ernesto Semán (University of Bergen)
Lara Weaver (Queen’s University Belfast)
SOUND/IMAGE 23, UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH (9TH-12TH NOVEMBER 2023)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Title: 'Remote Swampy Practices'
Collaborative paper with Ulf A. S. Holbrook and Ross Davidson
'CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PETROSONICS’ CONFERENCE, KING’S COLLEGE LONDON (11TH MAY 2023)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Title: 'Wetland, Wasteland, Wealth: listening to the postcolonial landscape of the Northern Irish peatlands'
SOUND/IMAGE 22, UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH (18-20 NOVEMBER 2022)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Title: “Untouched, Un-Mined, Unearthed”: Sonic Encounters in the Peatlands”.
Link to conference website
ECO-CREATIVITY 2022: THE ARTS MAPPING EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPES OF THE CLIMATE AND ECOLOGICAL CRISES, THE OPEN UNIVERSITY (18 NOVEMBER 2022)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Title: Beautiful Swamps and Backyard Apocalypses: Sounding Environmental Crises
17TH EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS (EASA) BIENNIAL CONFERENCE: 'TRANSFORMATION, HOPE AND THE COMMONS', AT QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY BELFAST (26-29 JULY, 2022)
LAB / WORKSHOP / CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Title: Sounds around us: Sounding the Peatlands & Belfast During Covid-19
This Lab invites audiences to explore two sites in Northern Ireland: peatlands (following the research of Lara Weaver) and Belfast during Covid-19 (research of Georgios Varoutsos). Incorporating sonic practice and ethnographic methodologies, this workshop considers presence, sensory knowledge-making, and sound as a means of heightened environmental awareness.
Link to conference website
3RD ANTHROPOLOGY OF MUSIC LECTURE SERIES AND MASTER CLASS, AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND AFRICAN STUDIES, JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITY, MAINZ (GERMANY): ‘ATTENDING TO THE MOMENT: AESTHETICS, POLITICS, SOUND’
(13-16 JULY, 2022)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION AND INVITED PARTICIPANT IN MASTERCLASS
Title: 'Sounding the Alarm: Aesthetics and Ethics of Representation in Ecological Sonic Art'
INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER MUSIC CONFERENCE (ICMC), 'STANDING WAVE', HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK IN LIMERICK, IRELAND (3-6 JULY, 2022)
PERFORMANCE OF MUSIC COMPOSITION and PANEL DISCUSSION
Title: “Interference”, jointly recorded and composed by Lara Weaver, Georgios Varoutsos, Robert Coleman, and the Sound and Space Research Group at SARC. Performed as part of the River Shannon Soundwalk for ICMC 2022 in Limerick, Ireland, presented by The Irish Science, Sound, and Technology Association (ISSTA).
YALE GRADUATE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM: ‘SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS: SOUND, COMMUNITIES, ENVIRONMENTS’
(4-5TH MARCH 2022)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Title: ’Sounding and Ungrounding Sacred Spaces: acousmatism, site-specific practice, and resonating from afar'
JOINT SMI/ICTM-IE POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE AT DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY (14-15TH JAN 2022)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Title: 'Contesting Sonic Space in France: Islamic Soundscapes, Secularism, and Acoustic Jurisprudence'
BFE/RMA RESEARCH STUDENTS’ CONFERENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH (6-8TH JAN, 2022)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Title: 'Composing Place: Sonic Location and/vs Sonic Dislocation'
Papers
WEAVER, L. ‘LISTENING TO AND THROUGH PETROSONICS’, SOUND STUDIES: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, VOLUME 9 ISSUE 2 (ROUTLEDGE, TAYLOR AND FRANCIS: JULY ISSUE 2023), 311-316 HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1080/20551940.2023.2238956
PUBLICATION: SOUND REVIEW
A review of the 'Critical Perspectives on Petrosonics’ Conference held on Thursday 11th May 2023, King’s College London and Online, for which I was a speaker.
WEAVER, L., RICHARDSON, J. (ED.) & RAUDON, S. (ED.) ‘SOUNDS OF THE BOG AND THE APOCALYPSE’, THE SONIFICATION (20 SEP 2022)
PUBLICATION: ARTICLE
A bog’s curious, ordinary, delicately explosive sounds belong in our narratives of climate crisis just as much as landscapes of epic disaster.
'COMPOSING PLACE: SONIC LOCATION AND/VS SONIC DISLOCATION' (2021)
DISSERTATION, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
In the spirit of audio geography actively intervening in the production of space, rather than merely analysing it from an exterior point of view (Gallagher, 2014), I use my sonic explorations as a composer to investigate the simultaneity within sound to both locate and displace, taking as a case study my own recent site-specific work for live and pre-recorded singers: 'This Place'.
Supervised by Richard Causton
'CONTESTING SONIC SPACE IN FRANCE: ISLAMIC SOUNDSCAPES, SECULARISM, AND ACOUSTIC JURISPRUDENCE' (2020)
DISSERTATION, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Analysing scenes of street praying in Paris, I look at disputes where the French government prevented religious sounds under secular laws of laïcité, explore the Schaferian notion of ‘cleaning up ’of urban soundscapes (Schafer, 1994), and evaluate whether a (public) secular soundscape is possible.
Supervised by Ross Cole