Jessica Roda
Associate Professor
Jessica Roda is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist whose research engages with the intersections of music, religion, cultural heritage, gender, health, and media. Trained in Europe and North America, her scholarly contributions include over fifteen peer-reviewed articles, two monographs, one edited volume, and the curation of two special issues of bilingual academic journal (French and English).
Her first monograph, (Se réinventer au present. Les Judéo-Espagnols de France, PUR 2018), provides a nuanced analysis of the social and political implications of Jewish music practices within diasporic communities originating from Turkey and Greece in France. Her second book, (For Women and Girls Only: Reshaping Jewish Orthodoxy through the Arts in the Digital Age, NYU Press, 2024), examines the ways in which ultra-Orthodox Jewish women, as well as those who have departed from religious life, utilize artistic expression, digital platforms, and technological tools to negotiate and transform religious norms. This work has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the Cashmere Award from the AJS Women’s Caucus (2021), the Hadassah Brandeis Institute Research Award (2021), the 2024 Society for Ethnomusicology’s Jewish Music Special Interest Group Prize, and shortlist 2025 Religion and the Arts Book Award by the American Academy of Religion.
Dr. Roda’s current research examines altered states of consciousness involving breathwork and psychedelics, with a particular focus on the translation of non-Jewish healing practices into Jewish religious contexts. She explores how globalized wellness cultures, drawing on Indigenous and alternative healing traditions, are translated, reinterpreted, and reframed within Jewish theology and practices. Her work pays special attention to how religious, particularly Orthodox, Jewish communities respond to these circulations, adapting such practices to their own theological frameworks, social norms, and cultural specificities. These cross-cultural encounters often prompt a revisitation of Jewish texts, histories, and embodied traditions, inspiring new interpretations of the Jewish past and its relationship to plant-based and alternative healing practices.
Roda has served as a fellow at Université de Paris (Lab Urmis), McGill University, Columbia University (Heyman Center), UCLA (Department of Ethnomusicology), Université de Tours, Hannover University, University of Pennsylvania, and the State University of Campinas in Brazil. She is a collaborator in various collective research programs in Canada, Europe, and Brazil. From 2022 to 2024, she served as the president-elect of the Canadian Association for Traditional Music and is currently the co-chair of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Special Interest Group for Jewish Music. Her public-facing work has appeared in BBC, LaPresse, TV Quebec, The Huffington Post, Akadem, Radio Canada, Canadian Jewish News, France Culture, The Moment, Glamour, The Conversation US, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Times of Israel, and numerous networks in Europe and the Americas (Brazil, Canada, Colombia, USA).
Beyond her academic life, she is also a trained pianist, flutist, and modern-jazz dancer (City of Paris Conservatory), and she grew up in French Guiana, a childhood that shaped her as a person, educator, and scholar.