During the Spring semester 2025, Pilar Serrano Betored will be a Visiting Research Scholar at the Foundation for Iberian Music / Brook Center. Dr. Serrano’s research focuses on women guitarists’ role in flamenco in Spain and the Americas.

The working title of her research is “Women Guitarists: Towards A New Gender Identity in Contemporary Flamenco Guitar.” She hopes to analyze the musical practice of flamenco guitar by women in the contemporary American and Spanish music scene from the critical perspective of gender studies. Moreover, she will conduct fieldwork on women flamenco guitarists currently active in NYC and the USA. She intends to study from a theoretical and musicological perspective the transatlantic circulation of flamenco music, its ideologies, and instrumental practices between Spain and the Americas, drawing on the existing literature on current music and gender. To this end she will conduct structured interviews with female flamenco guitarists who have developed a professional career in the American and Spanish context, covering their training, professional trajectory, and musical practices from the point of view of gender. She will also compile sound recordings of the guitar practices of these performers and will elaborate a selection of flamenco guitar musical scores composed by these performers intended for edition and publication. This will aim to create a repertoire of flamenco guitar music composed entirely of women.