Bisakha Goswami is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on gender roles and identities in Indian classical and religious music and dance, the historical development of Indian musicology as outlined in Sanskrit treatises, and Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s views on music education. After completing her BSc and MSc in Anthropology at the University of Calcutta and an MA in Musicology at Rabindra Bharati University, she edited the 15th-century Sanskrit musicological treatise Ānandasañjīvana during a research project sponsored by the Asiatic Society (Kolkata), leading to a PhD from the Department of Vocal Music of Rabindra Bharati University, where she has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Musicology since 2012.

She has authored several books and numerous articles on Indian musicology and ethnomusicology, covering diverse subjects such as the socio-religious background of the music and dance traditions of the devadāsī (temple dancers), unexplored Sanskrit treatises on Indian musicology, and Rabindranath Tagore’s reformative work on music pedagogy in Indian higher education. From 2016 to 2018, she served as a Research Associate at the South Asia Institute of SOAS University of London. In 2026, she was a Research Fellow at the Phonogrammarchiv Vienna, funded through a JESH Fellowship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Bisahka Goswami and Christian Poske will co-present and facilitate the lecture programme.