Margaret Rowley is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on Islamic sound in Senegal, West Africa. In Senegal, she has worked with and learned from the Layène Sufi community, a minority group located on the northern edge of metro Dakar. She is interested in questions around how sound can impact or craft religious subjecthood, impact community-building, and foster relationships between people and other-than-human beings. Rowley’s broader teaching and research interests include religion, discourses of gender and race, ‘Ajamization/hybridity, embodiment, ecomusicology, and the non/human.

She has written and contributed to articles on music used to spread awareness of the Covid-19 pandemic in Senegal, and on Sufi ‘ajami (local languages written in Arabic script) poetry in the Mouride Sufi community. Her recent publications focus on personhood and religious sound around Tabaski (Eid al-Adha: an Islamic festival widely celebrated in Senegal), and on timbre and connection with the divine through song. Her work has appeared in African Studies Review, Islamic Africa, Ethnomusicology, and the Yale Journal of Music and Religion (forthcoming). She is currently working on her first book project. 

Rowley is a member of the African Studies Association and the Society for Ethnomusicology, where she is the chair of the Religion, Music and Sound Section. She has also recently presented at the Internation Association for the Study of Popular Music and the Senegambian Studies Association’s 2024 conferences. She previously served as the treasurer for the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology. 

Rowley completed her PhD at Boston University in 2023 with a dissertation on the sonic construction of religious subjects in Senegal’s Sufi communities; her fieldwork was sponsored by a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Fellowship. She holds a BM in flute performance from Missouri State University and master’s degrees in flute performance and ethnomusicology from Michigan State University. She was a Teaching Fellow, Teaching Assistant, and Instructor of Record for various courses during her graduate work at Harvard University, Boston University, and Michigan State. Prior to joining the musicology faculty at the University of Iowa, she held an Assistant Professor position at Widener University in Pennsylvania. 

Courses taught by Dr. Rowley include:

• World Music

Pronouns:

• she/her/hers

Recent graduate seminars include:

• Music and the Body
• Foundations of Ethnomusicology

Research area:

• Ethnomusicology

Research interests:

• African Studies
• Religious Studies
• Critical Theory
• Ecology and Ecomusicology