Ironically, the “social
distancing” encouraged under pandemic conditions may actually create good conditions
for some kinds of scholarship, with fewer distractions for those who are trying
to complete projects. Under stressful conditions, it helps to have something meaningful to focus on while we wait for life to return to normal.
Recently I am making a lot of progress on a book
co-authored with Prof. Jiaxing Xie
entitled On Music Education: East-West Dialogues (Shanghai Education
Press, forthcoming), and have been developing new volumes for the Deep Soundings series in
historical ethnomusicology (Rowman & Littlefield press). Several postgraduate
students are making great progress on their theses, which I mentor through
videoconferencing, and my institution has agreed to offer a new PhD course
entirely online, for which I am now preparing material. We are also having students develop music performance projects through online collaboration tools, which is likely to be very useful experience for them in the long term.
Over the past two
months, I have completed reviews of articles and books for several refereed
journals and academic presses: Music Education Research, World of Music, International Journal of Music Education, Research Studies in Music Education, Finnish Journal for Music Education,
Research and Issues in Music Education, Nordic Yearbook for Music Education,
Amsterdam University Press, Lund University Press, and Rowman &
Littlefield. I have also approved some final edits to an article in Journal of
Popular Music Education, sent a book proposal to Harvard University Press, and completed much work on a new book proposal for Rowman & Littlefield.
It seems we should always try to make
the most of whatever conditions arise. Hopefully the pandemic will not turn out
to be as bad as feared, but for now it is certainly threatening and great caution
is warranted.
UPDATE: Online PhD Course in May 2020:
Click HERE for PhD-911: Non-Western Educational Philosophy and Policy.
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