Dr. Hedy Law is Acting Director and Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) School of Music. She received her Ph.D. in Music Theory and History at the University of Chicago in 2007 and has published in the Journal of Musicology, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Music History Pedagogy, Cambridge Opera Journal, the Opera Quarterly, and the following collections of essays: East Asian Voices of Resistance Against Racism in Music, Musique et Geste en France: De Lully à la Révolution, the Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, the Oxford Handbook of Music and Censorship, and the Oxford Handbook on Music and the Body.

Dr. Law’s research interests include eighteenth-century French spectacles (including opera, ballet, pantomime), the French Enlightenment, gender, Cantonese opera and music, Chinese immigrants in the Pacific Northwest Region, and global music history. Her book, Music, Pantomime and Freedom in Enlightenment France, was published by Boydell in 2020.

Before working at UBC in 2012, Dr. Law worked as a Collegiate Assistant Professor and a Harper-Schmidt postdoctoral Fellow of the humanities division of the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago in 2007–2009. She then taught as an Assistant Professor of Musicology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 2009–2012, where she received the university-wide Rotunda Outstanding Professors of the Year Award in 2010–2011. Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Research Council and Heritage B.C., among others. She was recipient of the Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship of the American Musicological Society in 2005.

Dr. Law served as a member on the Board of Trustees of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver in 2021–2024, and was elected in May 2021 as co-convenor of the American Musicological Society Global Music History Study Group. Since 2023, she has chaired the Fellowship Committee of the American Musicological Society and helped coordinate three fellowship subcommittees (Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowships, the Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship, and Holmes/D’Accone Dissertation Fellowship in Opera Studies). She will be Vice-Chair of the Standing Committee of Institutional Members of the Canadian Music Society/Société de musique des universités canadiennes (MusCan).

At UBC, Dr. Law served as Graduate Advisor and Associate Director, Graduate (2022-2024). She is currently Chair of the Arts Curriculum Committee.

World Lecture Music Series

Roundtable, “Listening for ‘American’ Global Music Histories and Futures,” Society for American Music Annual Conference. Tacoma, WA, March 21, 2025. [Organizer and Co-chair; Peer-reviewed; International]

“Sounding Taishanese in Vancouver: Chinese Immigrants’ Worlds, Belonging, and Muk’yu Ge (Wooden-Fish Song) in Alice Ping Yee Ho’s Chamber Opera, Chinatown (2022),” Society for American Music Annual Conference, Tacoma, WA, March 21, 2025. [Presenter; Peer-reviewed; International]

Workshop, “Sounding a Center Away from the Coast,” at the American Musicological Society Global Music History Study Group Business Meeting, the Annual conference of the American Musicological Society, Chicago, November 16, 2024. [Co-chair; Peer-reviewed; International]

Session “Power and Resistance: Musical Historiographies of China and Tibet,” the Annual Conference of the American Musicological Society, Chicago, November 15, 2024. [Chair; Peer-reviewed; International]

Symposium, “Sounding a Center Away from the Coast: Global Music History Study Group Lightning Talks,” at the Global Music History Study Group session, the Annual Conference of the American Musicological Society, Chicago, November 14, 2024. [Co-chair; Peer-reviewed; International]

“Sounding Numbers in Cantonese: Numbers Songs, Tone Language, and Trans-local Resonance.” The Second Asian Sound Cultures Project Conference. Hybrid conference organized by The University of Sheffield, September 17, 2024. [Presenter; Peer-reviewed; International]

“On the Translatability of the Cantonese Rhyme: Sounds and Sense in Bell Yung’s 2010 Translation of Tang Disheng’s Cantonese Opera Script for The Flower Princess (1957).” Conference: Translating the Field: Music, Power, and Praxis, Sept 6–7, 2024; Butler School of Music of the University of Texas at Austin. [Presenter; Peer-reviewed; International]

“Migration, Interracial Marriage, and Intergenerational Relationships: Global Music Histories in Vancouver.” East Asian Voices in Global Music Stories: Intersectional Privileges, New Minoritisations, Hybrid Conference. Wed Aug 7, 2024. University of London at Royal Holloway. [One of invited keynote speakers; Peer-reviewed; International.]

“Lamenting Snapshots of a Life: Muk’ yu ge and Fragments of Chinese Immigrants’ Lives in Twentieth-Century North America.” International Auto/Biography Association World Conference 2024. Reykjavík, Iceland, June 12–15, 2024. [Presenter; Peer-review; International]

“Rediscovering the Lost Xiqiao: Catalogue Practices and Preservation of Early Cantonese Opera in Vancouver.” Conference: “Sound Check! A Festival of Asian American Music, Sound, and Scholarship.” Co-organized by the Music of Asian America Research Center, in partnership with Wing Luke Museum, Seattle. April 27–29, 2024, and online May 11, 2024. [Presenter; Peer-reviewed; International]