Donna Lee Kwon

Coordinator of the Division of Musicology & Ethnomusicology

Degrees:

• PhD  University of California, Berkeley
• MA Wesleyan University
• BA/BM Oberlin College and Conservatory

Research Areas:

• Music of Korea
• East Asian and Asian-American popular musics
• ​Music/Space/Place and Ecomusicology

At UK since 2008

Donna Lee Kwon is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Kentucky and is currently the Musicology/Ethnomusicology Division Coordinator. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (Ethnomusicology), a MA in World Music/Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and a BA/BM (Women’s Studies/Piano Performance) from Oberlin College. She is the author of Music in Korea: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture, published as part of the Global Music Series on Oxford University Press (2011). Her research interests include North and South Korean music, East Asian and Asian American popular and creative music, gender and the body, site-specific performance, and ecomusicology. Many of these interests are addressed in her second book that stems from her dissertation research, entitled Stepping in the Madang: Sustaining Expressive Ecologies of Korean Drumming and Dance (Wesleyan University Press, 2024). She was recently awarded the distinction of University Research Professor (2025-2026) and has been awarded research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (2015-2016), the Korea Foundation, and the Fulbright IIE. Dedicated to service, Donna is Board Chair of the Bann Yun Lexington Korean Cultural Center and has served as President of the Association for Korean Music Research, the Society for Ethnomusicology Program Committee Chair, the Board of the Society for Ethnomusicology as Treasurer, MIDSEM President, and Recording Reviews editor of the Ethnomusicology journal. She is currently researching multivocality in K-pop and Korean American popular music and likes to engage in these topics on public-facing media.