About Una

Úna Monaghan is a harper, composer, researcher, sound engineer and sound artist. She collaborates, improvises and performs with poets, visual artists, computers, writers, musicians, and others.

Úna has held artist residencies at the Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas Montréal, and Atlantic Music Festival, Maine, USA. Úna also works as a sound engineer specialising in Irish traditional music, and experimental, live electronic and multichannel music, a role in which she travels worldwide.

She performs with harp and electronics, and released an album of her compositions, named “For” in 2018. Her compositions feature on television and radio, in theatre productions, and at international festivals and conferences, with recent performances by Red Note Ensemble and Crash Ensemble.

Úna held the Rosamund Harding Research Fellowship in Music at Newnham College, University of Cambridge from 2016-2019, and was appointed Lecturer in Sound and Music at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast in 2023.

Her research examines the intersections between Irish traditional music, experimental music practices, improvisation and interactive technologies.

In 2019 she received the inaugural Liam O’Flynn Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and the National Concert Hall Dublin, and in 2020 a BAN BAM award from Moving On Music and Improvised Music Company.

Her album Aonaracht, for solo traditional musicians and electronics, was released in January 2023.