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Ashby Morrison

Professor of Biology

Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur research interests are to elucidate the contribution of chromatin to mechanisms that promote genomic integrity.

Contact Info

Web page:

https://www.morrisonlabatstanford.org

BioMatthew D. Morrison, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, is an Associate Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Professor Morrison holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Columbia University, an. M.A. in Musicology from The Catholic University of America, and was a Presidential music scholar at Morehouse College. His research focuses on the relationship between identity, performance, property, copyright law, and inequities within the history and performance of music, with a focus on the history of American popular music and its global impact and circulation.

His published work has appeared in publications such as the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, American Music, the Grove Dictionary of American Music, Oxford Handbooks, art forums/publications, and on Oxford University Press's online music blog. Professor Morrison has been awarded several fellowships from Institutions such as the American Council of Learned Societies (Susan McClary and Robert Walser Endowed Fellow), Harvard University (Hutchins Center Fellow), the American Musicological Society, Mellon Foundation, the Library of Congress, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Center for Popular Music Studies/Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His research has been highlighted in media outlets such as The New Yorker, as well as featured in NPR’s Throughline. Morrison serves as a consultant, advisor, and collaborator with organizations in and beyond the arts, such as The Schubert Club, “The Sound Track of America” opening concert series at the SHED, NYC, The Glimmerglass Festival Opera, as well as Theory, Warner Music Group, and SONY music.

Professor Morrison's book, Blacksound: Making Race in Popular Music in the United States, is published by The University of California Press (2024), He is the author of the book, Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (UC Press, 2024), which has been received several accolades, including the Woody Guthrie Prize from the International Association for the Study for Popular Music-US, the Irving Lowens book award from the Society for American Music, awards from the Association of Recorded Sound Collection and the Prose Award for Excellence in the Humanities from the Association of American Publishers, an honorable mention from the Royal Music Association’s Cambridge University Book Prize, was a finalist for the Museum of African-American History Stone Book Award, and was named a “Best Music Book of 2024) by Rolling Stone Magazine. In addition to his work as a musicologist and within Black Studies, Professor Morrison is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work engages with Sound Studies, Performance Studies, Race and Intellectual Property Studies, and Queer Studies. His current research explores the ethics of AI and Intellectual Property in music.

Izabela Morska

Vscp Visiting Scholar, H & S Programs

BioIzabela Morska is a Polish scholar and writer, Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Gdańsk. Her research examines civic ethics, pluralism, and the cultural imaginaries of democracy, with particular attention to borderlands, migration, and the narrative forms through which political communities understand themselves. Her current work on Paweł Adamowicz—long serving mayor of Gdańsk and a prominent advocate of urban solidarity—situates his assassination in January 2019 within broader questions of civic responsibility, humanitarianism, and democratic resilience in contemporary Europe. She holds an MA from the University of Gdańsk, a PhD from the Polish Academy of Sciences, and an MFA from Mills College.

Morska has held research appointments at Humanities Institute University College Dublin, the Open Society Archives at Central European University Budapest, the Russian Institute for Advanced Study in Moscow, and the Beatrice Bain Research Group at UC Berkeley. She is the author of fifteen books across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and criticism, including Glorious Outlaws: Debt as a Tool in Contemporary Postcolonial Fiction (2016), and her work has been recognized with the Julian Tuwim Literary Award for lifetime achievement (2019). Her teaching and writing engage American political imaginaries, embodiment narratives, postcolonial and subaltern studies, LGBTQ+ literature and culture, and creative nonfiction.

Her recent projects include a Polish Ministry of Culture grant for The Legacy of Paweł Adamowicz and a multi year research initiative on violence in the media.

At CREEES Stanford she is going to explore civic ethics, border imaginaries, and the cultural narratives that frame staged and performative violence, examining how extremist discourses in Eastern Europe contribute to stochastic forms of political hostility and how these dynamics resonate with the narrative patterns she has identified in the Adamowicz case, including tensions between Hanseatic urban revival and nationalistic backlash.