News
Music Faculty Awarded New Fellowship
The Faculty of Music is delighted to announce the creation of a new Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Psychology of Music and Music Theory, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, which will be tenable for two years from a starting date between October 2011 and January 2012, will be open to candidates with doctorates in any area of music psychology or music theory. The Faculty is keen to support an internationally excellent researcher at the beginning of his/her career who will be working on a second research theme following the doctorate. Further details will be announced in due course. The closing date for applications will be 23 March 2011. Provisional enquiries and expressions of interest from potential candidates should be addressed to Professor Eric Clarke.
The psychology of music - the study of the psychological processes involved in composing, playing and listening to music - has been taught at Oxford since 2002, coming into particular focus in 2007 when Eric Clarke took up the post of Heather Professor of Music. The subject consistently attracts considerable student interest at both undergraduate and graduate levels. There are also increasing numbers of research students in the field. Internationally, the psychology of music has seen a rapidly growing impact on the study of music over the last 20 years, with the UK as a leader in this field. Oxford is now in a position to become a significant player in this strongly interdisciplinary enterprise.
The interests of music psychologists intersect in fruitful ways with the interests of music theorists. The scope of theoretical and analytical understanding of music has broadened enormously in recent decades, extending the traditional study of form, harmony and counterpoint, into an engagement with a wide range of critical disciplines, including the phenomenology and psychology of music. The object of analytical focus has shifted outwards from scores towards the ways in which performers and listeners interpret and understand musical structures. Further, the target repertoire has expanded to embrace early and avant-garde music, world and popular musics, most of which do not exist in conventionally notated forms. The analysis of performance, recordings and listening are all growing areas of inquiry in which theorists, analysts and psychologists have important (connected) contributions to make.
Theory and analysis are well represented at Oxford, across a broad spectrum of work, from early music theory to the analysis of contemporary music, from Arabic music theory to the analysis of recordings. With the support of the Fell Fund, Oxford has recently established a flourishing research partnership with Princeton University in theory and analysis. The Astor Visiting Lecturers this year (Kofi Agawu, Princeton) and next (David Huron, Ohio State) are a music theorist and a music psychologist respectively. Professor Agawu will be returning to Oxford in 2012-13 as the distinguished George Eastman Professor. These and other important developments will combine with the appointment of the Fellow with research interests that cut across theory, analysis and psychology to offer a timely opportunity to develop Oxford as one for the highest profile centres for interdisciplinary music analysis in the UK.
There are also extensive opportunities for the Mellon Fellow to develop research activities with a number of interdisciplinary partners: for example, Eric Clarke is the PI on a large AHRC-funded award as part of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP), involving a collaboration with Cambridge, Royal Holloway London and King's College London. Within Oxford, the Faculty has active links with researchers in Anthropology, Archaeology, Psychiatry and Psychology. The Faculty is also host to an ERC-funded 5-year research project under the direction of Professor Georgina Born on Music, Digitization and Distribution, and here too there are significant opportunities for collaboration and engagement for the Fellow in the broad field of music psychology/music theory.
The Oxford Music Faculty has significant research resources in the psychology and theory of music, including strong library holdings in both areas, two computer-monitored Disklavier pianos for empirical performance research, a high quality electronic studio, and fieldwork equipment (including video cameras, and compact digital audio recorders). The Fellow will have the opportunity to make use of all of these research resources, would be integrated into a number of interdisciplinary seminar initiatives (including the Bodily Intelligence Group and the Music Faculty/Philosophy Faculty joint seminar in Musical Aesthetics), would enable a specific seminar series in psychology/theory of music to be initiated, and would have excellent networking opportunities.
In summary, the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Psychology of Music and Music Theory will:
- work alongside, or as part of, internationally prestigious research projects;
- be involved with interdisciplinary developments across Oxford Faculties and Divisions;
- engage in networking with other cognate centres for research and teaching;
- be mentored by leading experts in the field;
- participate in undergraduate and graduate teaching, and skills training;
- make a significant contribution to teaching in rapidly developing aspects of the curriculum.