Bonnie McConnell is Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Higher Degree Research Convenor at the ANU School of Music. She received her PhD from the University of Washington in 2015. Her research examines music in relation to issues of identity, social change, and wellbeing in West Africa and Australia. Bonnie is the author of the monograph Music, Health, and Power: Singing the Unsayable in The Gambia (Routledge, 2019). Her work is published in the journals Ethnomusicology, Africa Today, Social Science & Medicine, Popular Music and Society, Voices, and the International Journal of Community Music, among other publications. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Fulbright-Hays Program, the American Association of University Women, and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. Bon­nie has per­for­mance expe­ri­ence in the areas of Senegam­bian Mandinka music, the Dagarti gyil xylo­phone from Ghana, Wag­ogo music from Tan­za­nia, and Irish traditional music. She has also per­formed as key­boardist with a Gam­bian dance band ded­i­cated to health edu­ca­tion through per­for­mance.