Yemisrach Eshetu is a second-year master’s student in musicology at Washington University in St. Louis. Originally from Ethiopia, she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the Yared School of Music at Addis Ababa University, where she later served as a lecturer from 2019 to 2024. Her research explores the intersections of music, religion, and identity within Africa and its diasporas, with a particular focus on indigenous traditions, women’s musical expressions, and the dynamics of hybridity and global mobility in African music. In her 2024 master’s thesis, Women in the Ethiopian Music Industry: A Critical Examination of Gender Barriers, Representations, and Strategies for Change, Yemisrach examines the participation of women in the Ethiopian music industry, identifies the factors that hinder their roles and representation, and discusses their contributions to the music industry.

Her current scholarship contributes to critical discourses on migration, cultural continuity and transformation, and innovation in African musical arts. Her professional experiences include serving as a summer research assistant for the Black Earth Project (2025) and an ongoing internship with 4theVille, a local Cultural Heritage Development Organization in St. Louis, where she assists contextual research for the designation of Historically Black high schools. She has also presented her work at the 2025 African Art Music Symposium, where she delivered the paper “The Pilgrimage of Women’s Pianism: Heterotopian Sonic Land, Representation, and the Complexity of Reception in the Case of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru,” hosted by Mountain Top University in Nigeria. Her current project, Ritual of Meskeling: Music, Identity, and Social Life in the Ethiopian Orthodox Diaspora in St. Louis, serves as her master’s thesis (2025–2026).