Profile

My most recent research project highlights the annual Junior Panorama steelband competition in Trinidad and Tobago, analyzing the nexus of influences at play within youth-oriented spaces. I argue that local community ensembles, private corporations, and the Trinidadian government have all cultivated a vested interested in the competition, and these competing influences have dictated the development of the competition in recent years. Beyond my primary research work with steelpan in Trinidad and the United States, I am also currently working on additional research projects on soca responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and reggae/dancehall as decolonial orchestral programing. 
 
My work has been recognized with several awards and grants, including the Society for American Music Margery Lowens Dissertation Research Fellowship, the Sigma Alpha Iota Philanthropies Inc. Doctoral Grant, the Society for Ethnomusicology Education Section Elizabeth May Slater paper prize, and the Society for Ethnomusicology Southeastern and Caribbean Section Dale Olsen paper prize.

I completed a Ph.D. in Musicology at Florida State University, a M.M. in Ethnomusicology at the University of Florida, and a B.M. in Music Education at the University of Delaware. Prior to coming to Pitt, I previously taught at the University of Delaware and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA.

Recent Courses

MUSIC311 Introduction to World Music

MUSIC1270 Music, Culture, & Technology: Youth Culture and Technology

MUSIC1310 Introduction to Global and Popular Music

MUSIC1396 Music in Society: Music of the Caribbean (Writing Focused)

MUSIC1396 Music in Society: Music in a Diasporic America (Writing Focused)

MUSIC2621 Graduate Ethnomusicology Seminar: Childhood Studies and Ethnomusicology

MUSIC2621 Graduate Ethnomusicology Seminar: Music of the Caribbean

Selected Publications

Espie, Stephanie R.H. 2025. “Every Creed and Race Find an Equal Place: Understandings of Race in Junior Panorama.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Online Publication: 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025.2555492 (Physical Publication Expected 2026)

Espie, Stephanie R.H. 2024. “I Found a Home Here: Networks, Scenes, and Safe Spaces in Junior Panorama.” Journal of Festival Culture Inquiry and Analysis 3(1): 88-101.

Espie, Stephanie R. 2022. “Playing with a Different Beat: The Whitening of American Steelband.” Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 21(2): 182-196. https://doi.org/10.22176/act21.2.182 

Forthcoming

Espie, Stephanie R.H. “Performing Girlhood: Embodied Performance in Trinidad and Tobago’s School Panorama.” Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Musical Cultures, Vol. 2, edited by Patricia Sheehan Campbell, Clayton Dahm, and Trevor Wiggins. Oxford University Press. (Expected Publication 2028)