Water Knowledge Project Team: University of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen in Scotland, UK, leads the project with a multidisciplinary team specialising in sonic arts, sound studies, electronic composition, cultural policy, urban government and asset-based community building, hydrology, and water security.
Professor Dr Suk-Jun Kim
Principal Investigator
Suk-Jun Kim, a South Korean composer, sound artist, and researcher, is a professor of music at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, UK. His work focuses on sound studies, immersive audio, phenomenological listening, electroacoustic music, and the relationship between sound, space, and place. Kim’s compositions have received international recognition, including awards at Métamorphoses, CIMESP, and the Bourges International Competition. He has held residencies at institutions like the MacDowell Colony, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, and as a Leverhulme Visiting Fellow at the University of Aberdeen.
In 2023, Kim launched Futures of Listening, a sound art and studies initiative, in collaboration with the National Asian Culture Center (ACC) in South Korea, where he worked as senior researcher with the Sound Lab Team. In 2024-25, he leads Futures of Listening: Water Knowledge from Two Cities, a global research project funded by the British Academy under the ISPF ODA initiative.
Dr David Haro
Co-Investigator
David Haro is Lecturer in Global Hydrology and Water Security at the Department of Geography and Environment at the School of Geosciences. He is specialised in water resources analysis, particularly under climate change and weather extremes. He is interested in water risk analysis and societal perception of risk for the development of appropriate measures, spatial and temporal propagation of risks in natural and human systems, and development of decision support systems for improved assessment and management of available resources and adaptation.
Dr Christina Ballico
Co-Investigator
Dr Christina Ballico is a lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Her research examines music’s relationship to and with place. This includes their levels of infrastructure and resourcing, as well as the resulting businesses and careers which flourish within and from such spaces. In turn, it considers the impact of their governance and the role of music in creative and cultural cities paradigms – including the music cities concept and emergent music ecosystem frameworks – and places a strong focus on the influence of locality on the ways in which they operate. Emergent work examines these concepts within chronourbanist planning approaches and in relation to asset-based community development. She is the editor of Geographically Isolated and Peripheral Music Scenes: Global Insights and Perspectives (2021) and the co-editor of Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (2020) and has undertaken a range of research consultancies for music advocacy bodies and state government arts’ departments in her native Australia.