Nomi Dave is an interdisciplinary researcher working across music / sound studies, legal studies, and anthropology. Her research examines sound, voice, violence, and the law.
Nomi is currently working on two projects. The first is a collaborative project on sound, listening, and sexual justice. She is completing a book manuscript, Amplified Feminism, based on six years of ethnographic research in Conakry, Guinea. The book follows a series of legal cases to ask how testimony on sexual violence is voiced, silenced, heard, and amplified in the production of evidence, in the courtroom and beyond. Connected to this research is a documentary film, Big Mouth (dir. Bremen Donovan), which Nomi is producing with the filmmaker Bremen Donovan and the journalist Moussa Yéro Bah.
Her second project involves research on audio remote access to courtroom trials. The project analyses vocal practices, sound technologies, and ways of listening in and out of court, in relation to the principle of open justice.
Nomi is the author of The Revolution’s Echoes: Music, Politics, and Pleasure in Guinea (2019, Chicago). The book explores music and the aesthetics of authoritarianism, considering how musicians and audiences navigate between pleasure and state violence. The book was awarded a Special Commendation from the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the Ruth Stone Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology.
Before entering academia, Nomi trained as a lawyer and worked for the United Nations, including as a refugee protection officer for the UN refugee agency in Guinea. Born in London and raised between the UK and the US, she earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Florida, and holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology and DPhil in Music from Oxford. She previously taught at the University of Virginia, where she founded and co-directed the Sound Justice Lab.
Books
(2019) The Revolution’s Echoes: Music, Politics, and Pleasure in Guinea. University of Chicago Press
Peer-reviewed articles and book chapters
(forthcoming 2026) ‘Listening to White Supremacy on Trial’, Public Culture 38(1)
(2025) ‘Audio-Visibility in a Guinean Trial: Sexual Justice and The Procès du 28 septembre’, PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review 48(2)
(2023) ‘Big Mouth: Amplified Feminism in Guinea’, Sound Studies 9(1): 1-21
(2022) ‘The Tone of Justice: Voicing the Perpetrator-as-Victim in Sexual Assault Cases’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Forum, ‘Big Mouth: Sexual Violence, Evidence & Ambiguity’, 12(3): 908-15
(2022, with co-author Bremen Donovan) ‘Introduction: Evidence, Ambiguity, & Expression in Big Mouth’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Forum, ‘Big Mouth: Sexual Violence, Evidence & Ambiguity’, 12(3): 889-94
(2020) ‘Becoming Militant: Dance, Movement and the Making of Revolutionary Selves in Guinea’, Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute 90(4): 721-45
(2020) ‘Sexual Violence and the Politics of Forgiveness in Guinea: Musical Interventions’, in The Art of Emergency: Aesthetics and Aid in African Crises. Cherie Rivers Ndaliko & Samuel M. Anderson, eds. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press
(2017) ‘Music, Multipartyism and the ‘Guinean Family’, the world of music 6(2): 115-30
(2017) ‘Sifting through Truths in Guinean Music’, in Researching Music Censorship. Annemette Kirkegaard, Helmi Järviluoma, Jan Sverre Knudsen, Jonas Otterbeck, eds. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
(2015) ‘Music and the Myth of Universality: Sounding Human Rights and Capabilities’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 7(1): 1-17
(2014) ‘The Politics of Silence: Music, Violence and Protest in Guinea’, Ethnomusicology 58(1): 1-29
(2009) ‘Une Nouvelle Révolution Permanente: The Making of African Modernity in Sékou Touré’s Guinea’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 45(4): 455-471
Public writing
(2024) ‘Rape survivors like Gisèle Pelicot are choosing to speak out, refuting the idea that they should feel shame’, The Conversation, 3rd December 2024.
(2024) ‘Audio-Visibility and the Law’, Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies, 4th September 2024,
(2023) ‘Jailbreak in Conakry’, Africa is a Country, 8th November 2023,
(2022) ‘What Do You Hear in Depp v. Heard?’, Sounding Out! 19th September 2022,
(2021) ‘Alpha Condé, Undone’, Africa is a Country, 30th September 2021,
(2020) ‘Guinea’s Authoritarian Afterlives’, Africa is a Country, 29th October 2020
(2020, with co-author Moussa Yéro Bah) ‘Black Atlantic Lives’, Africa is a Country 15th July 2020
(1997, with co-author Leslye Orloff) ‘Identifying Barriers: Survey of Immigrant Women and Domestic Violence in the DC Metropolitan Area’, Poverty & Race 6(4)
