ORCID

ResearchGate​

Academic Service

Peer Reviewer, Journal of Creative Research Methods (Policy Press / Bristol University Press)

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Publications

Helmi, X. (2026). HOSPITAL NOISES: Sonic Autobiography and the Embodied Experience of Autistic Auditory Perception – A Transdisciplinary Arts-Practice Inquiry. Forthcoming in Journal of Creative Research Methods, Issue 2,2026. Policy Press / Bristol University Press.

Helmi, X. (2025). To Be Unmade. Indelible Literary and Arts Journal, Issue 9 (Theme: Awakening), London Arts-Based Research Centre.

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Selected Presentations

Helmi, X. (2025, September 5). The Numinous Ear: Autistic Listening and Aural Diversity as a Gateway to the Divine and Sublime. Aural Diversity Conference, University of Salford, MediaCity, Manchester.

Helmi, X. (2025, May 11). The Numinous Ear: Autistic Listening and Aural Diversity as a Gateway to the Divine and Sublime. Sacred Arts 2025: Exploring the Spiritual Dimensions of Artistic Expression and Ritual, London Arts-Based Research Centre, University of Oxford.

Helmi, X. (2025, June 11). Research Day Presentation, Manchester.

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ABOUT

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My PhD operates at the intersection of aural diversity, neurodivergence, music, film, poetic inquiry, and embodied phenomenology. Grounded in transdisciplinary arts-practice research, my work positions creative practice as a mode of inquiry rather than illustration.

I explore how neurodivergent musicians experience and translate their auditory realities into artistic artefacts through instrumental performance, improvisation, songwriting, and multimodal practice. Drawing on phenomenology, I approach listening as embodied, relational, and processual,  shaped by memory, affect, and sensory orientation rather than abstract cognition.

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My research challenges linear and disembodied methodologies by foregrounding lived sensory engagement as a legitimate site of knowledge production. Rather than treating sound as a fixed object, I understand it as relational event — an unfolding interaction between body, perception, and environment. Through multimodal arts practice, I develop frameworks capable of articulating dimensions of auditory experience that exceed purely verbal description.

Alongside my core research, I explore how intense sonic encounters generate experiences of awe, sublimity, and relational consciousness. This work remains grounded in embodied perception and resists transcendental abstraction in favour of situated, lived experience.

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My academic trajectory spans music, broadcasting, documentary film, education, and psychotherapeutic counselling and adopts exploratory and practice-led methodologies that question dominant epistemologies and expand whose sensory realities are recognised within academic discourse.

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