Anna McDonald studied violin at the Canberra school of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. After an international career as a baroque and modern violinist, she has branched out into intercultural music, playing the Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) as part of her PhD research project. Throughout studies in Iran, Armenia and Australia, she has researched Persian concepts of creativity and society, through the lens of Mithraism and Zoroastrianism, Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus, and cultural psychology.  As a performer-researcher she is interested in the intersections between cultures through historical research and dismantling a sense of “Otherness”. She plays kamancheh and composes with her husband Malek Mohammadi Nejad in their intercultural group “Ensemble of the Eternal Land.” Anna also convenes the Women in Music program at the ANU School of Music.