Anna Stirr is Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Prior to joining the faculty, she held postdoctoral positions in Ethnomusicology and Anthropology at Oxford University, and in Asian Studies at Leiden University. Her research focuses on South Asia, particularly on Nepal and the Himalayan region. Stirr is currently working on two projects that deal with love, intimacy, and politics in Nepal, through the lens of popular song. The first looks at improvised dohori question-answer songs as culturally intimate, gendered expressions of ideas of nation, belonging and heritage, within a cycle of migration and media circulation that spans the globe. The second chronicles the history of Nepal’s politically oppositional "progressive song" from the 1960s to the present, with a focus on ideas of love, development and communist thought as interrelated ways of imagining a better future. Stirr maintains active research interests in the relationships between music, language, politics, religion and public culture in South Asia and the Himalayas. She holds a BA in Music and Religious Studies from Lawrence University in Wisconsin, and an MA, MPhil, and PhD in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University.