Maria Sappho

Maria Guerra Sappho is an artist and researcher exploring techno-social communities, experimental instrument-building, and artificial intelligence in creative practice. Her work navigates diaspora, ecology, cultural memory, and postcolonial histories through posthuman feminist and techno-moral lenses.

She is a lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on the BA Arts with Community programme and Free Improvisation module IXP. She is also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on Digital Playgrounds for Music (DPfM) at the University of Huddersfield, where she also completed her PhD within the ERC-funded Interactive Research in Music as Sound (IRiMaS) project. She is also a postgradhuate supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Music Performance, London.

Maria lead the Syzygy project (Immersive Arts UK funded), a Mixed Reality-based ecological storytelling installation, and was Composer-in-Residence with the Bahué Duo (USA), developing new works on diaspora and land. She co-founded Chimère Communities, establishing grassroots AI art hubs across Lesotho, South Africa, Switzerland, and the UK.

Internationally recognised as a composer and performer, she has toured with with Mogwai, and played with the International Contemporary Ensemble (USA), Instant Composers Pool (ND), Royal Northern Symphonia (UK) and the Australian Arts Orchestra (AU). She is also a long-serving member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. Her recent works include The Tentaculae (Creative Climate Award nominee, NYC), The Ostoyae (UNESCO Week of Sound), and Zemi (Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival).
Her awards include the BBC Daphne Oram Award (UK), the AiiA AI Prize (Switzerland), the MANE Emerging Composer Prize (Australia) and the Share Prize for digital art and technoogy (IT). She is co-author of New Directions in Musical Collaborative Creativity (Oxford University Press, 2025), and her research has been published in leading journals across music, technology, and critical theory.

Recent Publications 
MacDonald, R., DeNora, T., Sappho, M., Burke, R., & Birrell, R. (2025). New directions in musical collaborative creativity. Oxford University Press.

McPherson, H., & Sappho, M. (2025). I would be an improviser even if I was born on the moon. Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, 15(1).

Sappho, M., O’Hear, J., Ponlot, N., Frank, C., MacDonald, M., & Chimère. (2025). Driving Ms. Chimère: Developing community-led interdisciplinary artistic works in collaboration with AI. ECHO Journal. https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/publications/driving-ms-chimère-developing-community-led-interdisciplinary-art

Burke, R. L., Sappho, M., Birrell, R., MacDonald, R., & DeNora, T. (2024). Opening up openings: Zooming in on improvisation in the Theatre of Home. Psychology of Music. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356241247528

Gillies, S., & Sappho, M. (2021). Donohue+: Developing performer-specific electronic improvisation. Organised Sound, 26(1), 119–129. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771821000121

MacDonald, R., Burke, R., DeNora, T., Sappho, M., & Birrell, R. (2021). Our virtual tribe: Online improvisation during COVID. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.623640

Research interests

Feminist and postcolonial approaches to AI and music technology / Experimental instrument-building and improvisation / XR and immersive storytelling and ecological practices / Diaspora, cultural memory, and posthuman immigration