Dorothea (Dora) Hast received her Master of Music (MM) in Music Education, with a concentration in Orff Schulwerk, from the New England Conservatory and her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. She has done extensive field research on traditional music in Ireland, New England and India. Her current area of research is on the Gombey tradition in Bermuda. Her books include Music in Ireland: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (with Stan Scott: Oxford University Press, 2004) and Exploring the World of Music (with Stan Scott and James Cowdery: Kendall Hunt 1999), a text that accompanies the twelve-part PBS film series by the same name for which she served as Director of Content and Writer. She also has a chapter in OUP’s Global Music Cultures (2020). She has taught at Colgate and Wesleyan Universities, served as Assistant Director in Education Abroad and Global Partnerships at the University of Connecticut, and taught world music at Eastern Connecticut State University. She served as a Fellow at the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival in June 2022 and in May 2023 received funding from the Department of Culture in Bermuda for her collaborative research and book project on the Gombey dance and drumming tradition. She presented a paper on Gombey at the national conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Ottawa in October 2023 and will present another paper on Gombey culture at the Mystic Seaport in August 2024. Dora also performs with the Irish traditional band, Kitchen Ceili.