Benedict Turner-Berry

Benedict Turner-Berry holds a first-class degree in music from the University of Cambridge, which he followed with an MPhil degree specialising in Sound Studies and radio. Benedict’s work engages with sensory ethnographic and archival methodologies to explore the intersection of migration, music and citizenship. With an attention to affect and nostalgia, Benedict hopes to uncover an alternative sonic understanding of the social makeup of Jerusalem in the early 20th Century. Focussing on Palestinian radio broadcast alongside the birth of commercial recording in Ottoman Jerusalem, Benedict hopes to uncover the often-neglected historical and social narratives that are contested through sound. In looking at the forms of sonic practice that framed the social life of Ottoman Jerusalem, Benedict charts a sonic cartography for the period. It is hoped that this project will not only offer an epistemological reconsideration to Western conceptions of listening, but also continue the wider ongoing discourse on the historiography of West-Asia and North Africa. He is supervised by Dr Peter McMurray in the Faculty of Music.

During his time as an undergraduate, Benedict was Organ Scholar at Corpus Christi College as well as for St John’s Voices, the mixed-voice choir at St John’s College. Aside from playing the Organ, Benedict is also a keen singer holding a postgraduate choral scholarship in the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. During his time at Cambridge, Benedict has enjoyed playing and singing for multiple broadcasts, including the upcoming BBC broadcast of ‘Carols from King’s’.