The Curator

Rebecca Draisey-Collishaw joined the staff at ITMA in 2017 as an archive assistant (digital projects).

Rebecca has a long-standing interest in the music of the Irish diaspora. Her master’s research explored the ways that Irish immigrants in Canada use music to maintain connections to home and build new communities that reach across cultural lines. 

She completed her doctorate in ethnomusicology at Memorial University of Newfoundland (St. John’s, Canada). Her research there focused on public broadcasting in multicultural contexts and the role of music in crafting communities. She also assisted on a project about the trans-Atlantic connections between Irish and Newfoundland dance. That’s how she first encountered Aidan O’Hara’s recordings at ITMA. 

Rebecca has served as a board member for the Canadian Society of Traditional Music (2012­-2016) and is currently co-guest editing the 2018 volume of the Yearbook for Traditional Music, an issue dedicated to articles from the 2017 World Conference of the International Council of Traditional Music, held in Limerick.