York St John researcher and music activist selected to represent the UK at TED2026

PhD student Gabriella Di Laccio MBE is to present her research at TED2026 in Vancouver after bringing judges and audiences to tears with her powerful talk about gender inequality in music through history and in the age of AI.

Gabriella is a multi-award-winning soprano whose postgraduate research at York St John University explores how performance, data and community engagement can be used to address gender inequality in the music industry. 

She was named the London winner of the TED Global Idea Search in March and will now represent the UK at TED2026 in Vancouver, April 13 to 17 2026. Billed as a ‘historic gathering of the world’s most inspiring minds’, the conference boasts a global line-up that includes Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. 

Her doctoral research at York St John centres around a critical question: 

What happens when the cultural archive we inherit is incomplete - and we begin to build the future on top of it? 

Drawing on eight years of research and practice, her work reveals that thousands of women composers were excluded from the musical canon and that the same incomplete archive is now being used to train artificial intelligence systems. 

Gabriella Di Laccio MBE, PhD researcher at York St John University said: 

“I feel very honoured to represent the UK and York St John University, and I’m deeply committed to doing justice to this work and engaging more people in this important conversation. 

“Women composers did not disappear from history. Their work was dismissed, unpublished and excluded from the catalogues and institutions that shaped what was recorded, performed and taught. 

“People assume this is a classical music issue. It isn’t. The exclusion runs through every genre, every chart, every streaming playlist and now every AI system trained on them. The choices made in the past are still shaping the music industry today. This is not a classical music problem. This is an industry problem. 

“Our musical data is missing half of humanity’s creativity. If we do not repair this now, the music of the future will repeat the same mistakes - exponentially.” 

The TED Global Idea Search is a nine-city international programme spanning Sydney, Mumbai, Athens, Lagos, London, Singapore, Chicago, Buenos Aires and Amman, in which speakers from each city compete for the opportunity to address one of the world’s most influential live audiences. 

The theme of TED2026, “All of Us,” reflects a call for collective action at a time when the rules are being rewritten. 

Gabriella will be delivering her talk ‘Why have we not heard this music before?’ at a live event at York St John University on the evening of 19 May in the Creative Centre auditorium, York St John University. See Events for details.