Christi-Anne Castro

Associate Dean for Faculty Development; Associate Professor of Music

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Bio

Christi-Anne Castro is an ethnomusicologist whose research interests include music and politics, nationalism, community music, and music festivals. In 2010-11 she participated in the Faculty Scholars Program in Integrative Medicine at U-M, and in 2019-20 she was a Rackham-Mellon Public Engagement and the Humanities Faculty Fellow. She was director of the U-M Center for Southeast Asian Studies from 2013 to 2019. The university awarded her a John H. D’Arms Faculty Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities in 2021 and the Shirley Verrett Award for mentoring in 2025.

Castro’s book Musical Renderings of the Philippine Nation (2011, Oxford University Press) won the 2012 “Global Filipino Literary Award for Nonfiction.” Her varied publications include articles on music education in the Philippines, subjectivity in research, Asian Americans in popular music, and Tin Pan Alley music during the Filipino-American War. Her current book project is provisionally titled Rehearsing Community: Playing Music and the Art of Belonging. She was co-editor of the journal Music & Politics from 2017 to 2022 and a long-time member of the editorial board of the journal Asian Music.

She teaches a variety of courses, including Fieldwork & Ethnography, Global Pop, World Music Pedagogy, Music of Latin America, Music & the Body, Music & Nationalism, Music & Community, Everyday Musicology, Music Festivals, and Music and Social Life.

Her professional service includes serving twice on the Council of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), twice on the programming committee for the SEM national conferences, and was chair of the SEM program committee for the 2023 conference in Ottawa. She also composes and arranges music for Philippine rondalla and performs with the Iskwelahang Pilipino Rondalla of Boston as well as the PACE-MI Rondalla in Michigan. In 2022 she served as the composer-in-residence for the Classical Mandolin Society of America convention.