Hope you can join us for the last Food for Thought event of the season featuring Ilya Vidrin (Assistant Professor of Theatre) and Andrew Mall (Associate Professor of Music). The theme of this month’s Food for Thought is Arts-Based Practices for Health and Resilience. Each Faculty member will share a short presentation about their research and lunch will be served! All faculty, staff, and students are welcome. No rsvp required.

Dr. Andrew Mall teaches ethnomusicology, music industry, and popular music courses. He also advises independent studies, undergraduate honors projects, and student researchers. His research and teaching interests include, among other topics, mainstream and underground musics; ethnographic research methods; DIY music scenes, resilience, and public health; histories of music industries; music festivals; nostalgia, collecting, and consumption; and the political economies of Christian musics. Dr. Mall earned his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago in 2012. Prior to coming to Northeastern, he taught at the University of Chicago and DePaul University.

Dr. Mall is author of God Rock, Inc.: The Business of Niche Music (University of California Press, 2021) and co-editor of Studying Congregational Music: Key Issues, Methods, and Theoretical Perspectives (Routledge, 2021). His research has been appeared in American Music, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture, Journal of the Society for American Music, Popular Music, Punk & Post-Punk, Twentieth-Century Music, Yale Journal of Music and Religion, and several edited volumes.

An active performer of Javanese gamelan since 2006, Dr. Mall currently performs with Gamelan Laras Tentrem (formerly Boston Village Gamelan). In his free time, Dr. Mall enjoys spending time with his family, hiking and bicycling, cooking, visiting craft breweries, and collecting vinyl records.

Dr. Ilya Vidrin is a choreographer, dramaturg, and director of The Partnering Lab. Born into a refugee family, Ilya’s work engages with and investigates ethics of physical interaction, including the embodiment of care, trust, cultural competence, consent, and social responsibility. As an Assistant Professor of Creative Practice Research and Core Faculty at the Institute for Experiential Robotics, Ilya draws on concepts and methods in social epistemology, performance philosophy, ethics of care, dance studies, and cognitive psychology. Ilya has been featured as one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” (2022), and has been an artist-in-residence at Jacob’s Pillow (’18, ’19, ’23), National Choreographic Center, MIT Media Lab, Harvard Art Lab, L.A. Contemporary Dance Company, North Atlantic Ballet, Ballet Des Moines, Schwerin Ballet, the National Parks Service, The Walnut Hill School, Interlochen Arts Academy, Boston Center for the Arts, Le Laboratoire Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and the New Museum (NYC).

Dr. Vidrin is an alum of Northeastern, where he pursued undergraduate studies in Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, and Rhetorical Theory. He ​holds a Master’s Degree in Human Development and Psychology ​from​ Harvard University, and a doctorate in Performing Arts ​from the Centre for Dance Research at​ Coventry University (United Kingdom). His fieldwork involved creative research residencies with The Royal Swedish Ballet, Berlin Staatsballett, The Cambrians, Boston Ballet, Chicago Hubbard Street, and the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. Ilya has performed works by dance artists including William Forsythe, ​Sidra Bell, Aszure Barton, Ohad Naharin, Brian Brooks, Jill Johnson, Ali Kenner Brodsky, and Jessi Stegall.