Bridget Chinouriri, Phd
(AMMR fellow)

Bridget Chinouriri is an ethnomusicologist whose scholarly career is distinguished by excellence in research, teaching, leadership, and community engagement. Her promotion to associate professorship has strengthened her contributions to transformative scholarship through interdisciplinary collaborations, research partnerships, consultancy, and innovation-driven initiatives at local, regional, and international levels. She is a committed advocate for gender equality, social justice, and inclusive development, with a longstanding dedication to empowering women and girls through education, mentorship, and academic leadership. Her work is underpinned by a commitment to advancing equitable knowledge production and fostering socially responsive scholarship.

Her research interests include indigenous knowledge systems, gender studies, music and land politics, cultural heritage, and related studies with a particular focus on the transformative role of music in communities. She has published extensively in internationally recognised books and peer-reviewed journals, contributing significantly to scholarship in ethnomusicology and other related studies. In addition, she has successfully supervised numerous postgraduate students to completion at master’s and doctoral levels and serves as an external examiner for several universities across Southern Africa, contributing significantly to the development of the next generation of scholars.

Beyond academia, Bridget has made substantial contributions to cultural policy, heritage preservation, and higher education in Zimbabwe and beyond. She played a leading role in Zimbabwe in initiatives that contributed to the inscription of the Mbira/Sansi tradition on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. She has served on numerous national boards, advisory committees, and professional bodies, while actively engaging communities through research, policy development, and cultural advocacy. Her work continues to bridge scholarship, policy, and community practice in promoting cultural heritage, gender equality, and sustainable development across Africa and elsewhere.

Bridget received an AMMR seed money grant to develop a research project titled: “Resonant Resistance: Tonga Women’s Musical Agency, Land Rights and Gendered Displacements in the Zambezi Valley.”