Music Dissertations from Denmark and the Faroes

Two talented PhD candidates have now proceeded to the final stages of their doctoral studies.

Knut Eysturstein (University of the Faroe Islands) has submitted a full draft of his dissertation, The Concept of the Faroese in Music Education: Negotiating Identity and Notions of Tradition, which will soon proceed with final edits and then be sent to the examiners. This is the first study to offer an in-depth historical and ethnographic perspective on music in the Faroe Islands. The external examiners (“opponents”) for Knut’s PhD dissertation defense, to be held in Spring 2026, have also formally accepted their appointments: music educationist Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir (University of Iceland) and ethnomusicologist Kimberly Cannady (Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand).

Recently, Marianne Løkke Jakobsen (Director of Global Affairs, Royal Danish Academy of Music) has very successfully completed her “pre-defense” at Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark. Marianne has an impressive series of published articles that together demonstrate many important aspects to be considered in intercultural synchronous online teaching of musical instruments, particularly with Chinese students. She now proceeds to writing the “kappa” which links together the publications into a cohesive whole for presentation and evaluation of the entire project, offering multiple recommendations to improve music teaching and learning in conservatoires.

It has been a great pleasure to work with these fine young scholars who are generating entirely new insights for music and related fields.

 

PhD Defense on Music in Uganda

Soon, an important event to be celebrated: The PhD dissertation defense of Erisa Walubo at Makerere University, Uganda.

With studies supported by the CABUTE project, Erisa has forthcoming articles in Philosophy of Music Education Review and other journals, and has produced an impressive ethnographic study that demonstrates from a decolonial perspective how Indigenous arts traditions can be effectively integrated into education. 

It has consistently been a great pleasure to mentor Erisa, who shows enormous promise as a scholar and educator. 

 

Grieg Research School: Summer Course 2026

The Grieg Research School in Interdisciplinary Music Studies (GRS) has announced its upcoming PhD course and research symposium, open to all PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers with an interest in music.

This will be held on 16-18 June, 2026 in the greater Bergen area, on the beautiful island of Stord, western Norway. 

GRS promises to be an exciting event, with many stimulating opportunities to share and learn about the latest theories, methods, and findings across an array of music fields.

Please share this opportunity with music researchers, and click here for more information: https://griegresearchschool.no/courses/grs-summer-school-2026/

 

Public domain image source: https://snl.no/Sunnhordland

Board Meetings and PhD Completions

On behalf of the ISME Board, the Executive Committee has just completed 10 hours of online planning meetings across the past week for future activities of the International Society for Music Education. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with this tight-knit group of such professional, thoughtful and committed international colleagues from Mexico, Australia, USA, Hong Kong, India and Norway.

We believe our many initiatives will help make ISME even more effective and responsive to its members across the world.  

It is also a pleasure to announce that across the past few weeks, two PhD students, for whom I served as an external examiner, have formally passed their doctoral defense (viva voce) and now proceed to some final revisions before receiving their PhD degrees.

-Nurezlin Mohd Azib (2025, December), Reconceptualising the Learning of Expressiveness in Music Performance: Malaysian Undergraduate Voices Beyond Western Traditions (viva voce, Royal College of Music, London, UK). 

-Huang, Yuqing (2026, January), Vocal Characteristics and Social Class in Light Soprano Roles: A Study of Character and Performance in Opera (viva voce, UCSI University, Kuala Lampur, Malaysia).

I eagerly look forward to seeing what they achieve in the future!

Life always has its ups and downs, but music certainly helps us to find the resilience to get through everything. Click HERE to access a recent blues performance. 

A New Philosophy of Music Education

 

Our latest book will finally be published in the coming months, A New Philosophy of Music Education for the Era of AI.

As artificial intelligence (AI) more deeply impacts many aspects of education and the arts, we are hopeful that this book will become a helpful resource for teachers of all kinds. 

This original monograph is the outcome of a long-term collaboration with Professor Jiaxing Xie, an ethnomusicologist and music teacher educator who worked for years in Beijing as Director of the Chinese Music Research Institute of China Conservatory, and recently published an 18-volume encyclopedia on the history of Chinese musical thought.

 

Here is a summary:

This book outlines a philosophy of music education that is responsive to the age of artificial intelligence. Against the background of AI's challenges to human modes of production, the authors demonstrate how music education can become a tool for self-discovery in this transformative era. Taking the approach of a dialogue between Chinese and Western perspectives, the book addresses the relationships between the social functions of music education and individual development in different historical periods, and envisions the potential role of music education in a new environment shaped by AI. Integrating insights from recent research, it establishes a forward-thinking philosophy of music education that is oriented towards self-discovery and grounded in science. Bringing together philosophical perspectives from Chinese and Western scholars, this book shows how integrating these perspectives can clarify the values that shape music education practices, and enable scholars and educators to better address contemporary issues in the teaching of music.

 

Prof. Pamela Burnard (Cambridge University) also wrote a beautiful Foreword for this book. Detailed information is available on the Routledge website.

 

GAME Symposium 2025

Across recent years we have been hosting the GAME symposia in Bergen each December as an annual activity of the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group.

This was another great year, with participants from more than 12 countries and territories, including USA, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Poland, France, Greece, Japan, China, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.

This year, our PhD Candidate Kristian Tverli Iversen gets much of the credit for hosting and chairing. 

A special hightlight of the first day was a full 1-hour presentation of the nearly completed PhD dissertation of Knut Eysturstein on music heritage and education in the Faroe Islands.

Click HERE to see the academic program and HERE to see the program from our concert at this event.

Click HERE to learn about previous GAME Symposia.

Keynote and Lectures in China, Autumn 2025

 

I look forward to offering lectures through the Graduate School of Education at the Education University of Hong Kong, as part of the Global Competence Partnership project. This time my lectures will be on quite practical topics that nevertheless have broad relevance across academic fields, including how to publish in scholarly journals and effectively participate in academic conferences.

It is also a great pleasure to be offering a keynote speech for China’s 6th National Symposium on Oral History of Music and the Annual Meeting of the National Society for Oral History of Music in Nanning city, in the beautiful Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China (2025). 

Here is a link for more information on this event (in Chinese):

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/tcFhRtKSuwv7kJr51uOqZA

I am also an invited speaker for upcoming events in Seoul and Amsterdam. Click HERE and HERE for details.

Image source (Guangxi): 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yanshan,_Guilin,_Guangxi,_China_-_panoramio_%281%29.jpg