Runa Hestad Jenssen

Runa Hestad Jenssen (PhD) is an associate professor in music education at the Faculty of Education and Arts. Runa is a singer, teacher and researcher who is passionate about voices. Her background comes from the performing field - as a classically trained soprano from Barratt Due Music institute and the Norwegian Academy of Music. As a singer, she works with a repertoire that ranges from folk music and baroque to opera and contemporary music, with extensive experience both nationally and internationally as a soloist with various choirs and orchestras, as well as a singer in The Norwegian Soloist-ensemble.

Her research focuses on voice, gender, difference, embodiment, inclusion, music education, political and socio-cultural aspects of singing.

Runa’s PhD thesis Voicing dialogues: Exploring kaleidoscopic notions of voice through performative autoethnography, is an autoethnographic study about transforming the teacher’s and singer’s voice into the researcher’s voice. It is an inquiry

through self-narrative that ranges from professional to personal and binds feminist new materialist theory to the question of voice and discovery. Runa follows a thread of thought in the exploration of difference, mainly through thinkers such as Rosi Braidotti (Nomadic theory), Karen Barad (Posthumanism) and Judith Butler (Gender performativity). Runa integrate key theories and concepts that move her into a space of pedagogical difference. This space is then interrogated in terms of rethinking voice pedagogy and exploring new ontologies of voice that break down conventional pedagogical thinking. With her thesis, Runa sets an example for other musicians, teachers, and researchers to ponder and reflect on their own work and invites them to reconsider the relevance of existing pedagogical thinking and practice and the need to attune to the space opened through dialogue with the Other.