Our research

What does it mean to create music? How do we encounter and interpret new works? How do we strive to invent new sounds, and how do we wrestle with the past to bring fresh interpretations?

Advancing understanding of the human capacity for music by examining all kinds of music from around the world and what it means to its practitioners and audiences.

Our multi-dimensional research is informed by specialist knowledge of teaching and learning inside traditional, popular and contemporary music. We combine methodologies of education with musicological, sociological, psychological, historical, and cultural studies.

We seek to change the way people listen to music. We study popular and concert traditions, private and public music practice, historical and contemporary musical movements and a range of other phenomena in order to reveal new ways of hearing.