Interests
Jennie Gubner, PhD
Ethnomusicologist
It is at the intersection of our disciplinary lenses that the most innovative and productive conversations about brain health and aging occur.
Current Work
Jennie is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Chair and Director of Graduate Studies for the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Applied Intercultural Arts Research at the University of Arizona.
Personal Hero
Mercedes Sosa
Words of Strength
Realizing collaborative interdisciplinary projects
Vision
Jennie believes that it is at the intersection of our disciplinary lenses that the most innovative and productive conversations about brain health and aging occur. As an educator, she thinks we must advocate interdisciplinary and creative approaches to dementia and brain health education early on to give professionals and community members diverse resources through which to live healthy lives and build inclusive, age-friendly societies.
Strategy
Jennie is using her training in music, filmmaking, and intercultural studies to design interdisciplinary community-based college courses where undergraduate students from diverse disciplines can learn about aging and dementia through the lens of the arts.
Impact
Jennie is grateful to the Atlantic Fellowship for allowing her to learn about brain health from so many humble, innovative, and compassionate professionals from across the globe. From sitting in on patient visits with neurologists and geropsychiatrists to learning about the projects of her creative peers in other countries, GBHI has allowed her to understand aging and brain health from so many productive new angles.
Motivation
Jennie is excited to see students and professionals from the arts and health sciences show an increased interest in building collaborations related to arts and brain health. By advocating interdisciplinary projects that draw on inter-professional strengths and perspectives and that emerge from relationships of mutual respect, we can work to more robustly leverage the arts to support healthy aging across the lifespan.
Education & Experience
Jennie Gubner is a socially engaged scholar, violinist, and visual ethnographer with a PhD from the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology. She works as an Assistant Professor of Music and Chair of a Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Applied Intercultural Arts Research at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include Latin American popular music with a focus on intergenerational tango music scenes in Buenos Aires, creative and applied approaches to the study of music and dementia and aging, and ethnomusicological filmmaking. In 2019, she became an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute in San Francisco. As a violinist, she loves playing folk and popular music styles from North and South America.
Awards & Honors
2019 - Best Education Paper Prize, American Geriatrics Society Annual Meeting, Portland, Oregon 2013 - 1st Place, Band performance, Topanga Fiddle Contest, Topanga, California 2005 - Thomas J. Watson Fellowship - 12 months of independent tango research in Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Italy, Spain, France, Serbia, & Finland
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