Research

Dr. Toner has completed two years of fieldwork in northern Australia working with the Yolngu people, primarily in the community of Gapuwiyak, N.T. His research explores the relationship between music and social identity, with a particular interest in kinship and social organization, poetics, ethnohistory, and the repatriation of intangible cultural heritage materials. Since 2005 he has extended his research interests to include folk music and Irish cultural identity in New Brunswick. He has published in the Yearbook for Traditional Music, Humanities Research, and The Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology, and his edited book, Strings of Connectedness: Essays in Honour of Ian Keen, was published in 2015.