Music4Change in Groningen

Plans are now in place for a unique music conference to be held in Groningen, Netherlands in early November: “2024 International Research School on the theme of Sustainable Cities and Cultures of Music.”

This event is connected with the EU Music4Change project and Grieg Research School for Interdisciplinary Music Studies.

My main activity at this conference will be to serve as Respondent for the “Prøvedisputas” of PhD candidate Elizabeth Oltedal (of Volda University College, Norway), as she reaches the final stages for completion of her PhD.

Elizabeth has long been deeply interested in the challenges associated with developing fair, accurate, and meaningful assessments of music performances. This is a complex and important topic of relevance to all music teachers, and I look forward to seeing what we can learn from Elizabeth’s research.

Click HERE for more information about this event in Groningen, Netherlands.

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martini_Toren.JPG

Book Series Boards

It is a pleasure to have just been appointed to the International Advisory Board for a book series in the field of research methods, New Research – New Voices, on Brill Press. I currently also serve on the boards of two other book series, one in the field of music education and one in ethnomusicology.

The music education series is the ISME Routledge Book Series of the International Society for Music Education.

Since 2019, I have also been co-Editor of a book series that will soon be part of Bloomsbury Publishing (who recently purchased Lexington Books and the rest of the Rowman & Littlefield Academic catalogue). That is the Lexington Series in Historical Ethnomusicology: Deep Soundings, which currently has four volumes published and two more under contract.

It is interesting to engage in interdisciplinary scholarship, and although each academic field has distinctive characteristics there are significant intersections between educational research, musicology, and music education. Each of these book series is producing unique scholarly contributions and seems to have a promising future despite the increasing challenges faced by academic presses. 

I am eager to hear from prospective authors who may be interested in publishing in any of these series.

Third East Africa Teacher Education Symposium

The third annual East Africa Teacher Education Symposium (EATES) will be held at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda on 6-8 November, 2024.  

The symposium theme is Curriculum Development and Decolonization of Education in East Africa. 

This symposium seeks to enhance cooperation in the field of education across the East African region, including the nations of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, DR Congo, Somalia, and Tanzania. This pioneering series of symposia is sponsored by the CABUTE project, which is funded by the Norwegian government.

The paper submission deadline is 15 September 2024.

Click HERE for more information.

Bergen Summer Research School 2025

“...we can create the momentum needed for systemic shifts,” says Professor Birgit Kopainsky of University of Bergen. Dr. Kopainsky is the scientific director of Bergen Summer Research School 2025, which will take place in Bergen 10-20 June 2025.

The theme of BSRS-2025 is Systems thinking — towards sustainability and justice, to which Kopainsky “will invite some of Norway’s leading researchers to organise a series of parallel PhD courses on alternative directions towards a sustainable future.”

We look forward to offering the PhD course Creative Innovations in Higher Education as part of BSRS-2025, which had to be postponed from BSRS-2024.

Click HERE for more information on Bergen Summer Research School.

Image source: 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Lorenz_attractor_yb.svg 

Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education

A new book Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education has been published that promises to stimulate important discussions about how the methodology of artistic research can strengthen higher music education. Music performance pedagogy has long needed more systematic approaches, and I have been arguing in favor of artistic research for many years, and mentored some artistic research dissertations at Sibelius Academy more than a decade ago, including Ari Pouitianen’s study Stringprovisation.

Higher education is often resistant to change, but the book Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education shows promising innovations that will be relevant to music lecturers and professors in many different institutions. 

Some of the authors of Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education are affiliated with my institution in western Norway, including Stefan Ostersjo, who was our visiting professor across recent years, and cognitive musicologist Odd Turleiv Furnes. Click HERE to access another recent co-authored book that combines the fields of ethnomusicology and artistic research, and demonstrates how transcultural approaches can fit in higher education.

AND, click HERE to access Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education, which is published in open-access format, freely available to anyone curious to read it.

Dissertation on Sight Reading Pedagogy in China

It was a pleasure to serve as external examiner for the Doctoral Defense of Ms. LIN Qi at The Education University of Hong Kong. This dissertation was supervised by Koji Matsunobu (main supervisor) and Bo-Wah Leung (committee member), and the defense was held today in a hybrid session with participants in both Hong Kong and Europe.

Teaching of sight reading is often challenging for music teachers. Ms. Lin’s doctoral study is a multifaceted exploration of current approaches to sightreading pedagogy (how people are taught to read western classical music notation on keyboard instruments) at multiple higher education institutions in the mainland China context. It also tests the impact of an intervention (implementation of a specific sightreading pedagogy) in terms of both quantitative data (testing of sightreading skills as well as self-efficacy scores) and qualitative data, which include observations, journals, and over 50 interviews.

This unique doctoral study demonstrates relationships between self-efficacy and competence in the field of sight-reading pedagogy, and affirms the effectiveness of newer pedagogies in the mainland China context. Personally, this was my first dissertation committee in China, and with this dissertation completion I have now served on doctoral supervisory and examining committees with universities in 15 countries. That experience has served as a foundation for my teaching in interdisciplinary courses on Doctoral Supervision as well as my recent writings on the topic of doctoral studies and doctoral mentoring.    

Ms. LIN Qi’s doctoral dissertation makes a new contribution to knowledge in this important area, and she has demonstrated an array of skills that are likely to serve her well as a researcher in the future with a doctorate from The Education University of Hong Kong.

Image source (at top): Brian Ferneyhough Day, Barbican Centre | The Arts Desk

World Conference in Helsinki

It is a pleasure to return to Helsinki, Finland—where I worked as a Professor more than 10 years ago—to participate in the world conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) in July/August 2024.

I currently serve on the Board of ISME and I am Chair of its History Standing Committee, so there are many activities at this world conference. Also, two of my current PhD students from Scandinavia are giving presentations, but an additional one (PhD student from Uganda) recently had to withdrawal and postpone their participation until next time.

In the late morning on Monday, the History Standing Committee (HSC) hosts an open session called “Meet the Mentors” which is intended to offer helpful suggestions to PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who are beginning to develop research projects on any historical topics. We have already confirmed participants are coming from the Americas, Europe, and East Asia. 

On Monday afternoon, I chair an HSC symposium on intercultural issues in historical studies, with participants presenting papers on historical topics in music education in Japan (I collaborate here with Koji Matsunobu), Germany (Alexandra Kertz-Welzel), Australia (Malcolm Cole), and the Faroe Islands (my PhD student Knut Eysturstein).

On Tuesday I give a presentation as part of a symposium on AI and philosophy of music education with several well-known researchers, such as Jiaxing Xie, Pamela Burnard, Alex Ruthmann, and Victor Fung.

I have also been asked to participate in the ISME Publications Committee meeting on Wednesday afternoon with Gwen Moore.

On Thursday I will also be a Discussant for a symposium on preliminary outcomes from the Nordic Singing Maps project, led by David Thorarinn Johnson.

The HSC also has our meet & greet session and business meeting later that day.

Finally, on Friday a presentation with my PhD student Marianne Jakobsen on Nordic approaches to advanced orchestral instrument pedagogy comes at the very end of the conference.

It will be exciting to reconnect with colleagues from around the world and to learn about the very latest developments in our field.

 

Link for Chinese description of ISME activities:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/gymAzjq5UNUJPcPzqVcNVA

 

Image source: Helsinki Skyline | Helsinki is the capital of Finland and ho… | Flickr