Speakers 2027

Elizabeth Margulis is Professor and Director of the Music Cognition Lab at Princeton University. Her first book for general audiences is Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams, named a Best Book to Read by the Wall Street Journal. Her previous scholarly books have won prizes from the Society for Music Theory, the American Musicological Society, and the American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers, and been translated into seven languages. She has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, with findings covered in outlets ranging from NPR’s All Things Considered to the BBC, and been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation.

Dr Léon van Ommen is Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen and Co-Director of the Centre for Autism and Theology. Through practical-theological research, he aims to support individuals and faith communities in their spiritual and religious lives. Léon’s research centres on autism, with a particular interest in listening to the perspectives of those who are most excluded, e.g., non-speaking autistic people or autistic people in ethnically minoritised communities. Léon has researched autistic experiences of worship and church communities in various countries, including the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Australia. Working with research psychologist Dr Katy Unwin (La Trobe University, Melbourne), Léon has extensively researched the sensory aspect of worship, including a comparison between autistic and non-autistic experiences of the sensory aspect of worship. Léon is author of multiple publications on these topics, including his monograph Autism and Worship: A Liturgical Theology (Baylor University Press, 2023).

Olívia Bandeira is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at Unicamp, conducting research on the consumption of media and cultural goods by evangelical women in Brazil and Argentina. She is a member of the Laboratory of Anthropology of Religion (LAR-Unicamp) and of the research project “Religion as Politics: Activism, Moralities, and Secularism.” She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the Graduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology at UFRJ, a master’s degree in Social Communication (UFF), and a bachelor’s degree in journalism (UFF). She is a member of Intervozes – Brazilian Collective for Social Communication, where she coordinated the areas of training, research, and international networking. She is the author of the book “Música gospel: disputas e negociações em torno da identidade evangélica no Brasil” (Papéis Selvagens, 2023).

Dr. Soraya Heinrich Eberle is a Brazilian musician, theologian, and educator, specialized in the study of Sacred Music and Liturgy. Eberle holds a Doctorate and Master’s degree in Theology from Faculdades EST, and a Bachelor’s degree in Music from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, with a distinguished career at the intersection of art, faith, and education. She currently serves as a faculty member in the Graduate Program (PPG) and in the Theology, Music Therapy, and Music Education (Licentiate) programs at Faculdades EST, in São Leopoldo, Brazil. At the same institution, she coordinates the Music Education program. For 10 years (2010–2020), Eberle has served as the National Music of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB). She has extensive experience in choral conducting, singing, vocal practice, congregational hymnody, and developing music and theology training curricula.