Helen Phelan
Biographic Data
| ID | 1608473 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helen Phelan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helen |
| FAMILY NAME | Phelan |
| SIGNATURE | PHELAN H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Limerick |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9122-0070 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Cambridge Companion to Folk Music
A groundbreaking critical introduction to folk music and song focused on questions of identity, community, representation, politics, and popular culture. Written by a distinguished international team of authors, this Companion is an indispensable resource for rethinking the confluence of sound, heritage, and identity in the twenty-first century. A unique addition to the literature, it highlights the fundamentally hybrid and (post)colonial dynamic…
Supporting singing in Irish primary schools: An evaluation of the YouthSing Ireland pilot project
This research paper examines the lived experiences of key stakeholders in a pilot project developed to support and promote singing in Irish primary schools. ‘YouthSing Ireland’ is an initiative of Sing Ireland, the association responsible for the development and promotion of group singing in Ireland. The study examines the role of the YouthSing Ireland pilot in supplementing existing provision for singing in primary schools. It employed qualitati…
Introducing Gregorian Chant to a Malaysian Methodist Congregation: A Case Study
This study explores the feasibility of introducing Gregorian chant into contemporary Chinese Methodist worship in Malaysia. Using ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviews, and focus groups, this article documents a pilot study conducted at Sing Ang Tong Methodist Church in Sibu, Sarawak, where seven singers learned and performed the communion chant Gustate et videte. Three different transcription editions were created to…
Play On: Storying a global conversation on urgent issues of community-engaged practice and research
This article documents the project Play On , a series of online curated conversations held between community arts practitioners and researchers based in Ireland and Australia. The Play On series featured contributions from community musicians and artists, researchers, activists and Elders. Together, we considered the challenges and opportunities we encountered in our work and discussed how we might respond to urgent issues impacting our field, ou…
Music and singing as arts-based methods to facilitate participatory spaces for co-production in migration health research: A mixed methods study
Opportunities for refugees and migrants to be involved in health research in re-settlement countries is not optimal. This creates a structural bias in evidence to transform health systems into diversity sensitive inclusive systems. Arts-based methods using music and singing are underexplored in migration health research even though they may have specific characteristics to facilitate participatory spaces for co-production. We report a mixed-metho…
We are all facing the same problem’: Lived experiences of online participation in the Irish World Music Café community music initiative in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic
The Irish World Music Café was created in 2015 in Limerick, Ireland, in the context of the Irish Refugee Protection Programme. The Café is grounded in the four ‘PERC’ principles of participatory, ethical, reflexive and creative engagement. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Café moved online on World Refugee Day 2020 with two additional online Cafés thereafter. In January 2021, a review of participation in the Café commenced to guide th…
Sonic citizenship
The 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum was a watershed moment in defining what it means to be Irish. This chapter draws on ethnographic work undertaken during 2004–2005 with the Trinity choir, an African female choir based at the Augustinian church in Limerick city, Ireland. Using Bellamy’s discourse on citizenship as a point of departure, it explores an expansion of the construct from a legal and/or political one to include a growing emphasis on …
The Craft of Ritual Studies
September 01 2018 The Craft of Ritual Studies The Craft of Ritual Studies. By Ronald L.Grimes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; 432 pp.; illustrations. $115.00 cloth, $ 33.95 paper, e-book available. Helen Phelan Helen Phelan Helen Phelan is Professor of Arts Practice at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland, and author of Singing the Rite to Belong: Music, Ritual and the New Irish (Oxford University Pr…
Singing the Rite to Belong
Why do so many people feel part of something bigger than themselves when they sing with others? How does listening to people sing, especially in certain ritual contexts, give us this same feeling? With this book, singer and scholar Helen Phelan draws on over two decades of musical and educational research to explore the agency of singing in fostering experiences of belonging through ritual performance. Set against the backdrop of “the new Ireland…
Singing the Rite to Belong
Chapter 6 focuses on a watershed moment in Irish history in defining a legal sense of belonging: the Irish citizenship referendum of 2004. It is contrasted with another kind of belonging performed through the ritual of Christian baptism. It focuses on a baptismal ritual conducted in Limerick 10 days after the citizenship referendum. Through an analysis of two communion songs sung by Trinity Choir (an African women’s ensemble) and Elikya Choir (a …
Repertoires of Belonging: Ritual, Music, and the New Irish
Chapter 2 explores the act of singing through the lens of culturally specific repertoires. The emphasis on repertoire in ritual contexts often leads to an ideologically driven understanding of the role of singing. Focusing on the body as the instrument of the singer through a theoretical engagement with somatics is proposed as a useful counter to the appropriation of sung repertoire for ideological positioning. An examination of an Easter Triduum…
The Untidy Playground: An Irish Congolese Case Study in Sonic Encounters with the Sacred Stranger
This paper explores the proposal that music, and particularly singing, has unique properties that render it amenable to encounters with "the other" or the sacred stranger. Drawing on the deconstructionist works of Kristeva and Derrida, as well as the postmodern hermeneutics of Kearney and Caputo, it explores current debate concerning the nature of "the sacred" in contemporary life and the erosion of the theistic/atheistic divide, while proposing …
Religion, music and the site of ritual: Baptismal rites and the Irish citizenship referendum
While ritual practice is not exclusive to religion, religious systems have always relied on rituals to act as their expressive voice. Ritual, by its very nature, is a performed event. Through music, movement, poetry, silence, art and proclaimed word, religions embody and express the beliefs, tensions and aspirations of the communities who perform them. Drawing on the works of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Paul Tillich, John Caputo and Talal Asad, this …
Practice, ritual and community music: Doing as Identity
As a specialist in ritual theory and performance, with some professional experience of communtiy music, I have always been struck by the robust resistance to clear-cut definitions or identities, by both ritual and community music. This article takes as its point of departure the proposal of ritual scholar Catherine Bell, that we abandon the quest for conceptual identity and more fruitfully turn our attention to the potential of practice to genera…
Practice, ritual and community music: Doing as Identity
As a specialist in ritual theory and performance, with some professional experience of communtiy music, I have always been struck by the robust resistance to clear-cut definitions or identities, by both ritual and community music. This article takes as its point of departure the proposal of ritual scholar Catherine Bell, that we abandon the quest for conceptual identity and more fruitfully turn our attention to the potential of practice to genera…
Practice, ritual and community music: Doing as Identity
As a specialist in ritual theory and performance, with some professional experience of communtiy music, I have always been struck by the robust resistance to clear-cut definitions or identities, by both ritual and community music. This article takes as its point of departure the proposal of ritual scholar Catherine Bell, that we abandon the quest for conceptual identity and more fruitfully turn our attention to the potential of practice to genera…
Religion, music and the site of ritual: Baptismal rites and the Irish citizenship referendum
While ritual practice is not exclusive to religion, religious systems have always relied on rituals to act as their expressive voice. Ritual, by its very nature, is a performed event. Through music, movement, poetry, silence, art and proclaimed word, religions embody and express the beliefs, tensions and aspirations of the communities who perform them. Drawing on the works of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Paul Tillich, John Caputo and Talal Asad, this …
Singing the Rite to Belong
Why do so many people feel part of something bigger than themselves when they sing with others? How does listening to people sing, especially in certain ritual contexts, give us this same feeling? With this book, singer and scholar Helen Phelan draws on over two decades of musical and educational research to explore the agency of singing in fostering experiences of belonging through ritual performance. Set against the backdrop of “the new Ireland…
Singing the Rite to Belong
Chapter 6 focuses on a watershed moment in Irish history in defining a legal sense of belonging: the Irish citizenship referendum of 2004. It is contrasted with another kind of belonging performed through the ritual of Christian baptism. It focuses on a baptismal ritual conducted in Limerick 10 days after the citizenship referendum. Through an analysis of two communion songs sung by Trinity Choir (an African women’s ensemble) and Elikya Choir (a …
Repertoires of Belonging: Ritual, Music, and the New Irish
Chapter 2 explores the act of singing through the lens of culturally specific repertoires. The emphasis on repertoire in ritual contexts often leads to an ideologically driven understanding of the role of singing. Focusing on the body as the instrument of the singer through a theoretical engagement with somatics is proposed as a useful counter to the appropriation of sung repertoire for ideological positioning. An examination of an Easter Triduum…
The Untidy Playground: An Irish Congolese Case Study in Sonic Encounters with the Sacred Stranger
This paper explores the proposal that music, and particularly singing, has unique properties that render it amenable to encounters with "the other" or the sacred stranger. Drawing on the deconstructionist works of Kristeva and Derrida, as well as the postmodern hermeneutics of Kearney and Caputo, it explores current debate concerning the nature of "the sacred" in contemporary life and the erosion of the theistic/atheistic divide, while proposing …
Sonic citizenship
The 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum was a watershed moment in defining what it means to be Irish. This chapter draws on ethnographic work undertaken during 2004–2005 with the Trinity choir, an African female choir based at the Augustinian church in Limerick city, Ireland. Using Bellamy’s discourse on citizenship as a point of departure, it explores an expansion of the construct from a legal and/or political one to include a growing emphasis on …
The Craft of Ritual Studies
September 01 2018 The Craft of Ritual Studies The Craft of Ritual Studies. By Ronald L.Grimes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; 432 pp.; illustrations. $115.00 cloth, $ 33.95 paper, e-book available. Helen Phelan Helen Phelan Helen Phelan is Professor of Arts Practice at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland, and author of Singing the Rite to Belong: Music, Ritual and the New Irish (Oxford University Pr…
We are all facing the same problem’: Lived experiences of online participation in the Irish World Music Café community music initiative in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic
The Irish World Music Café was created in 2015 in Limerick, Ireland, in the context of the Irish Refugee Protection Programme. The Café is grounded in the four ‘PERC’ principles of participatory, ethical, reflexive and creative engagement. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Café moved online on World Refugee Day 2020 with two additional online Cafés thereafter. In January 2021, a review of participation in the Café commenced to guide th…
Play On: Storying a global conversation on urgent issues of community-engaged practice and research
This article documents the project Play On , a series of online curated conversations held between community arts practitioners and researchers based in Ireland and Australia. The Play On series featured contributions from community musicians and artists, researchers, activists and Elders. Together, we considered the challenges and opportunities we encountered in our work and discussed how we might respond to urgent issues impacting our field, ou…
Music and singing as arts-based methods to facilitate participatory spaces for co-production in migration health research: A mixed methods study
Opportunities for refugees and migrants to be involved in health research in re-settlement countries is not optimal. This creates a structural bias in evidence to transform health systems into diversity sensitive inclusive systems. Arts-based methods using music and singing are underexplored in migration health research even though they may have specific characteristics to facilitate participatory spaces for co-production. We report a mixed-metho…
The Cambridge Companion to Folk Music
A groundbreaking critical introduction to folk music and song focused on questions of identity, community, representation, politics, and popular culture. Written by a distinguished international team of authors, this Companion is an indispensable resource for rethinking the confluence of sound, heritage, and identity in the twenty-first century. A unique addition to the literature, it highlights the fundamentally hybrid and (post)colonial dynamic…
Supporting singing in Irish primary schools: An evaluation of the YouthSing Ireland pilot project
This research paper examines the lived experiences of key stakeholders in a pilot project developed to support and promote singing in Irish primary schools. ‘YouthSing Ireland’ is an initiative of Sing Ireland, the association responsible for the development and promotion of group singing in Ireland. The study examines the role of the YouthSing Ireland pilot in supplementing existing provision for singing in primary schools. It employed qualitati…
Introducing Gregorian Chant to a Malaysian Methodist Congregation: A Case Study
This study explores the feasibility of introducing Gregorian chant into contemporary Chinese Methodist worship in Malaysia. Using ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviews, and focus groups, this article documents a pilot study conducted at Sing Ang Tong Methodist Church in Sibu, Sarawak, where seven singers learned and performed the communion chant Gustate et videte. Three different transcription editions were created to…
Art (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Irish (6 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Irish and British Studies (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Singing (5 works)