Althea SullyCole
Assistant Professor
Althea SullyCole is a multi-instrumentalist and ethnomusicologist from New York City. Althea received her PhD in ethnomusicology from Columbia University in February of 2023; an MA in ethnomusicology from Columbia University in 2018; an MA with distinction in Music in Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2016; and a B.A. in ethnomusicology at Barnard College in 2012.
From 2024-2026, Althea will be performing research on an Award for Faculty from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the United States, which, among other things, will fund fieldwork in Mali and Guinea in support of her scholarship on historical collections of musical instruments from the Mand茅 region of West Africa. Previously, Althea was a West African Research Association Post-Doctoral Fellow (2023), a Sylvan C. Coleman and Pam Coleman Memorial Fund Fellow in the Musical Instruments Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2020-22) and Dean鈥檚 Fellow in the Music Department at Columbia University (2017-22). She is currently the co-chair of the Organology Special Interest Group and Secretary of the African and African Diasporic Music section at the Society for Ethnomusicology. Her publications include articles in Ethnomusicology, the World of Music, the Galpin Society Journal and the American Music Instrument Society Online.
Althea studied her primary instrument, the kora, a 21-stringed West African harp, under korists Yacouba Sissoko and Edou Manga. She spent 3 years studying the instrument in Dakar, Senegal, where she was a resident artist at . In addition to her solo work, she has worked with , , , , , , , , Lisette Santiago, , and father (in his ), among others. In 2015, Althea formed the duo alongside traditional Chinese zheng player, Muqi Li, with whom she performed at Royal Albert Hall and on BBC 3 Radio. More recently, she performed at the Apollo Theatre in New York City with LaFrae Sci鈥檚 Groove Diplomacy Orchestra; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. with Lisette Santiago鈥檚 project 鈥淚n Her Voice鈥�; and at the John L. Tishman Auditorium at the New School in New York City with Craig Harris鈥檚 project 鈥淔estac 鈥�77鈥测��.
Althea has also worked as an FCC licensed radio programmer in the jazz department at ; interned in the Public Programming department at ; worked as an archivist (home of the Alan Lomax Archives); hosted and produced , an audio podcast that explores the lives of musicians through music; performed field and archival research at the Musee de Thies in Senegal; worked as a music specialist at the ; and was Music Programs Editor at . At Columbia University, she was a Diversity Fellow (2017-18), Teaching Observation Fellow (2018) and Research Assistant in the African Languages Studies Department (2018-20). She was the Associate Editor of from 2019-20 and a contributing editor to , the podcast of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, from 2018-2020. Althea has given a number of talks and facilitated panels at the Society for Studies in Africana Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center, the People鈥檚 Forum, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Left Forum, the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy and the African Studies Association.
