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Yuanyuan Zhao

Biography

Yuanyuan Zhao is a Ph.D. student in Ethnomusicology at University College Cork. She is from Henan, China, and completed a Bachelor's degree at Zhengzhou University. (211 national project universities in China).In 2018, She went to the UK for a master's degree in Musicology (University of Leeds) and Music psychology (University of York) and obtained a double master's degree in 2021. Yuanyuan commenced her Ph.D. studies at UCC in October 2022, supervised by Prof. Jonathan Stock and Dr. Alexander Khalil.

Yuanyuan is professional Erhu player. She started to learn Erhu at age of 6. Served as the chief of the Erhu Voice in the National Orchestra of Zhengzhou University, and collaborated with well-known conductors Xinmin Zhang and Jipeng Peng to participate in a large number of orchestra performances and competitions. She also is a guitarist in the indie band ‘Blue Eyes’. Yuanyuan is proficient in playing Chinese traditional and modern music, especially combining these two styles together.

She is currently an Erhu performer at the Asia Arts Association and a reporter for Hong Kong Photo News. During 2016-2017, in Social Investigation about the Nanjiang Puppet Theater, Zhangzhou, China, she carried out field investigations about the current situations and development of the puppet theater with duties including photography, interviews, archives investigation, etc. Produced the investigation proposed suggestions to facilitate the theater's development and helped the theater to successfully bid for UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. At the same time, she has rich experience in organizing music and cultural exchange activities and started organizing major local music and cultural activities in the UK in 2018. Her research interests are mainly related to music and stereotypes, music, and popular culture.