Sociomusicology: March 2024

3/20/24

Hong Kong, Spring 2024

This month I have been visiting Hong Kong as Honorary Professor with the Education University of Hong Kong. This visit was made possible through the Global Competence Partnership project, and my main objective is to plan further exchange between our institutions, especially at the doctoral and postgraduate levels.

Here I have especially been collaborating with Koji Matsunobu, who now leads the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts at EdUHK, and I have participated in his postdoctoral research group meeting (with Lexuan Zhang, Luna Ning Luo and Robbie Ming Hon Ho) and the doctoral seminar (coordinated by Lexuan) as well as a doctoral qualifying examination for Kay Li Wing Ki.

This has also been an excellent opportunity to meet with ISME President Bo-wah Leung and other colleagues here such as composer and music technologist Michael Chi Hin Leung and music education researchers Yang Yang and Matthew Thibeault. I also met with prolific music education historian Prof. Wai-Chung Ho (Hong Kong Baptist University), who has produced several interesting books across the past decade.

During my time here, a delegation with students from Nara University of Education came to visit, with a joint symposium and concert, and through that event I had a chance to meet with the Japan-based Chinese ethnomusicologist Prof. Lin-Yu Liou.

It has also been a great pleasure to get to know two fine young classical pianists, Dr. Suzuki Keishi (Nara University of Education, Japan) and Dr. Philbert King Yue Li (Education University of Hong Kong). Philbert has generously met with me to sightread through some romantic art songs and I am looking into whether it may be possible to plan a lecture-recital series for the next time I visit Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is certainly an exciting place for music education and related fields, and I look forward to seeing what develops through our collaboration.

Welcome to Sociomusicology

For over 15 years (since 2007), this website has offered musings on contemporary society and its music by David G. Hebert, PhD. He is a sociomusicologist specializing in global music education who has held academic positions with universities on five continents. Dr. Hebert is now a tenured full Professor with Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen. There he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group and manages the multinational government-funded Nordic Network for Music Education, which organizes annual intensive Master courses and exchange of teachers and students across eight countries. He is also an Affiliated Professor with University of the Faroe Islands and an Honorary Professor in China with the Education University of Hong Kong.

Professor Hebert's research applies an international-comparative perspective to issues of pluralism, identity, and cultural relevance in music education, as well as processes by which new music traditions emerge and change - both sonically and socially - as they are adopted into institutions. Born in the 1970s, he is among the most widely-published and globally-active music scholars of his generation (h-index:20; i10-index:30), with professional activities in an average of 8 countries per year across the past decade (2008-2020).