Xsara Helmi Research Visit to the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge

PhD researcher Xsara Helmi will join the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge as a visiting student from Lent term

2027, following her Michaelmas 2026 visit to Cambridge Digital Humanities.

Building on her transdisciplinary research, she will focus on the project, The Numinous Ear: Autistic Listening and Aural Diversity as a Gateway to the Divine and Sublime. Drawing on music phenomenology, her project explores autistic listening and neurodivergent perception as sites of potential relational, affective, and numinous consciousness.

During her visit, she will be sponsored by Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology Dr McMurray His research in sensory ethnography, Islamic acoustics, and ‘auralities’ explores how listening practices and acoustic environments are shaped by culture, space, and power. He is currently completing an ethnographic book and filmmaking project, Pathways to God: The Islamic Acoustics of Turkish Berlin.

This interest in plural, culturally situated listening provides a direct framework for Helmi’s research into autistic hearing and aural diversity, creating a shared space to explore non-normative, embodied auditory experience.