A musicologist and vocalist by training, Katelyn Best earned her B.M. in vocal performance from Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN (2007) followed by her M.M. (2010) and Ph.D. in musicology/ethnomusicology (2015) from Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. While in Florida, she served as a Lecturer for the Department of Musicology at Florida State University, teaching courses in American Roots Music, Modern Popular Music, and World Music Cultures for both music and non-music majors. She was also Co-Director of the University's Andean Ensemble (2016) and Director of the World Music Ensemble Summer Music Program (2010). During her time teaching, she was nominated for an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (2012) and received the Academic Tutorial Assistant of the Year Award (2015). While living in Switzerland, she was involved with the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University where she conducted a seminar on "Popular Music, Disability, and Deaf Culture." She currently serves as a Teaching Assistant Professor of Musicology at West Virginia University.

 

As a scholar, Katelyn's research explores music in Deaf culture, hip hop, popular music, sound studies, musical movements, and cultural activism. She has presented her work at isaScience (2018), the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (2017, 2018), the Society for Ethnomusicology (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021), the Southeast and Caribbean Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2011, 2015), and the African American Studies international conference on African American Music in World Culture (2014). She received a Carol Krebs Research Fellow Award to conduct fieldwork throughout the U.S. and was awarded the SEM Crossroads Music and Social Justice Paper Prize (2019) and the SEM Applied Ethnomusicology Paper/Project Prize (2019) for work based on this research. Her recent chapter titled “Ethnocentrism 2.0: Hearing-Centrism, Inclusivity, and Musical Expression in Deaf Culture” was published in At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice.