I am Senior Lecturer in Music. My work examines the social situation of musical performance and spans critical, theoretical and empirical research involving elite North Indian instrumentalists, jazz and free improvisers, and western classical ensembles and conductors.
My latest publications include articles on musical mind and imagination for Music & Science (SAGE) and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association (Cambridge Core), and a forthcoming interdisciplinary chapter co-written with two prior PhD students, ‘Interaction in Indian music: Connections and critical reflection’. For an idea of my current projects, follow Related Links below.
I led the four-year undergraduate MA Music (Hons) programme until 2022, with outstanding overall student satisfaction ratings (NSS 2021, 2022). This curriculum and course design project connected many issues in my research: to do with the role of conventional music literacy in HE and music scholarship, access and opportunity in music education, and critical approaches to scientific and public discourse around music.
I am lead author and presenter of the University of Edinburgh Coursera MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), Fundamentals of Music Theory, engaging 300000 active learners and recruiting around 500 new students per week. My teaching practice is recognised as outstanding by a EUSA Best Course award and successive Teaching Award nominations.
External appointments include national and international grant awards boards, and programme examination posts at Sheffield University (PG) and currently Queens’ University Belfast (UG). I am President of the International Society for Interdisciplinary Musicology, and recently completed a term as co-Chair of the RSE Young Academy of Scotland. I am an Associate Editor of the Journal, Psychology of Music, and Editorial Board member of Musicæ Scientiæ, the journal of ESCOM (European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music).