Diandian Zeng

Bio

Diandian Zeng is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology at UC Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on music and health, sound and embodiment, and Chinese music, broadly defined. Currently titled "Aging through Music: Sonic Care and Cultural Well-being among Senior Chinese Immigrants in Los Angeles," her dissertation is an ethnographic study of the role that everyday musical activities play as an embodied form of care within social infrastructures. The project also explores how seniors' age-related hearing impairment reshapes their relationships to the self, community, and broader sounding world—changes that require both clinical support and sociocultural understanding. This dissertation project was awarded the 21st Century Fellowship by the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2025.

Zeng received her B.A. in Musicology, with a minor in Music Therapy, from the Central Conservatory of Music, and her M.A. in Ethnomusicology from UCSB. Her M.A. thesis examines how Chinese radio calisthenics organized masses, shaped standardized bodies, and cultivated collective ideologies through embodied listening. With a continuing passion for music and health, Zeng has worked as a music therapist in multiple clinical institutions and is currently undertaking a recreational therapy internship at a community health center in Los Angeles as part of her dissertation fieldwork.