Fiona Magowan was educated at the universities of Nottingham in Music and Oxford in Social Anthropology and awarded a D.Phil at Oxford. She held lectureships in Anthropology at Manchester University (1993-96) and Adelaide University, South Australia (1996-2003) before coming to Queen's University in 2003. She has been Vice-President of the Australian Anthropological Society 2000-2002, Chair of the Anthropological Association of Ireland (2006-08), a member of the Royal Irish Academy's National Committee for Social Sciences (2009-2011) and Chair of the Music and Gender Symposium of the International Council for Traditional Music. She is a member of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2017 and a Member of the Royal Irish Academcy since 2023. 

Her research has addressed three interconnected areas: music, sound and movement; art, emotion and the senses; and religion, identity and transformation. She has conducted fieldwork among Yolngu of the Northern Territory of Aboriginal Australia since 1990; with Stolen Generation artists in South Australia; and recently with Australian musicians working with refugees. As a Fellow and Research Lead of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, she is examining comparative aspects of arts and conflict transformation, specifically through music, identity and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and around the globe. She has published eight books including, Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation (Bloomsbury 2023 co-edited); Christianity, Conflict, and Renewal in Australia and the Pacific (Brill 2016, co-edited with Carolyn Schwarz); Performing Gender, Place, and Emotion (Rochester 2013, co-edited with L. Wrazen), The Anthropology of Sex (Berg co-authored with H. Donnan); Transgressive Sex: Control and Subversion in Erotic Encounters (Berghahn co-edited with H. Donnan) and Melodies of Mourning: Music and Emotion in Northern Australia (Oxford, James Currey 2007).

She has been PI or CI on several RCUK grants including, 'Sensing Risk: Walker-driver and Walker-Driver Interactions in the City' (PI, ESRC 2006-2008); 'Creativity in a World of Movement' (CI, HERA 2010-2012);  'The Domestic Moral Economy in the Asia Pacific' (CI, ESRC 2011-2015) and Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation (PI PaCCS 2017-2022). For this latter project she led a team of 6 Queen's staff working across three continents on the impacts of sound and its transformations. She has also been CI on the GCRF funded project 'The Role of Music in Conflict Transformation' (2017) with Prof. Rebelo (PI) and PI on the GCRF workshop, 'Dance, Art and Drama in Conflict Transformation' (2017-2018).

Queen's University Staff Excellence Awards

In 2025 Professor Magowan was shortlisted in the Student Choice category of the Queen's Staff Excellence Awards for her work with MA and PhD students. You can view the nomination here: 

https://qubstudentcloud.sharepoint.com/sites/int-peopleandculture/_layouts/15/stream.aspx?id=%2Fsites%2Fint%2Dpeopleandculture%2FSiteAssets%2FSitePages%2FSEA%2FF%20Magowan%20%2D%20Student%20Choice%20Shortlist%2Emp4&referrer=StreamWebApp%2EWeb&referrerScenario=AddressBarCopied%2Eview%2Ea2c260f0%2D86de%2D4e3a%2Da2a5%2D7845544b1502

Postgraduate Supervisory Excellence Awards

Professor Magowan has also received Queen's Postgraduate Supervisory Excellence Awards twice in 2015 and 2017 and she was the first recipient of this award in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Queen's Teaching Award 

Professor Magowan was also the first recipient of a Queen's University Teaching Award in the School of History and Anthropology (2007). For further information on the award see links below.

http://www.mediator.qub.ac.uk/ms/streams/awards2007/Fiona_MBR_Broadband_Stream_16_9.wmv

http://www.mediator.qub.ac.uk/ms/streams/awards2007/Fiona_384K_Stream.mov

Relevant Websites

Royal Irish Academy Committee for Social Sciences http://www.ria.ie/committees/socialscience/new.html

Anthropological Association of Ireland: http://www.anthropologyireland.org/index.htm

International Council of Traditional Music:

http://www.ictmusic.org/ICTM/

Undergraduate:

Expressive Cultures: Sound, Text and Image (ESA1001 to 2018)

Being Creative: Music, Media and the Arts (ESA1001 from 2019) 

Performance, Power and Passion (ESA2002 and ESA3002)

The Politics of Performance: From Negotiation to Display (ESA3002)

Anthropology of Sex and Gender (ANT2020, ANT3003)

Dissertation Writing (ANT3030)

Postgraduate:

Advanced Anthropological Methods (MA Level, ANT 7009)