Gale Franklin

• PhD (Canadian Studies, Carleton University); MA (Ethnomusicology, Memorial University of Newfoundland); Bachelor of Music (Carleton University)
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Gale Franklin (she/her) is an interdisciplinary ethnomusicologist and critical race scholar. Her research brings together critical race theory, intersectional feminisms, settler colonial studies, sound studies, and ethnomusicology to examine relationships between music, sound, power, and belonging.

Her doctoral research, Listening to White Supremacy: Race, Space and the Canadian Sonic Imaginary, examines how sound and listening shape settler-colonial whiteness, racial hierarchies, and Canadian national identity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Ottawa, including the 2022 Freedom Convoy occupation, she developed an anti-racist feminist listening methodology to explore how white supremacy resonates through everyday sonic environments, political movements, and narratives of Canadian exceptionalism. This research also informed a public-facing soundwalk through downtown Ottawa, available to explore on Echoes.xyz.

Gale’s broader research interests include music and sound in relation to social movements, gender, race, settler colonialism, disability justice, and community-engaged practice. Her recent publications include “Petro-masculine Soundscapes: Music, Sound, and Violence at the 2022 Ottawa ‘Freedom Convoy’” (2025), co-authored with Dr. Allyson Rogers, and “Developing a Community-Engaged Research-Creation Methodology through the Resonance Project,” co-authored with Dr. Ellen Waterman. Her forthcoming publications examine anti-audist and anti-racist approaches to ethnomusicology, as well as Syrian refugee musical narratives in relation to Canadian immigration policy.

At Carleton, Gale teaches courses in music and Canadian Studies, emphasizing critical listening, experiential learning, and feminist and anti-colonial approaches to sonic and sociocultural expression.