We try to give advice to our doctoral students about how to prepare for the PhD examination. These instructions (link), training events (link), and mock examinations are useful orientations for the pinnacle of doctoral students’ careers, but describing the process from the other side of the table, from the examiner’s point of view, is what … Continue reading Examining a PhD thesis
The first woman to be awarded PhD at Durham was music psychologist
In 1936, Clara Robertson, who was 28 years old at the time, was the first woman to defend her doctoral thesis at Durham University. The title boldly stated "The psychology of musical appreciation: an analysis of the bases and nature of the experience of listening to music", and her examiners, Dr C. S. Myers and … Continue reading The first woman to be awarded PhD at Durham was music psychologist
Open Data in Music and Science
We have all heard about the replication crisis in psychology. It is not that the research ideas or methods themselves are flakey but selective analysis and reporting as well as insufficient details are making the past findings difficult to replicate (see also the discussion at the end of one of the rare replication studies in … Continue reading Open Data in Music and Science
Music, visual imagery, and emotions
We have plenty of parallels between the visual and auditory domains. Just think of how the word "brightness" is used to describe not only colours but also sounds. Music can also go "up" and it can give rise to elaborate visual narratives. Some applications draw direct parallels with visual information and how to play the … Continue reading Music, visual imagery, and emotions
What is an impact of an article? (Part II)
As described in Part I (What is an impact of an article?), there are several ways of assessing the merits of an article. Article-level metrics avoid some of the problems associated with the publication forums and the costs involved in expert evaluations, but these do introduce other dilemmas worth discussing. An article may sometimes be cited for reasons … Continue reading What is an impact of an article? (Part II)
What is an impact of an article? (Part I)
We all strive to do and publish high quality research and most of us think we know such work when reading it, but how do we collectively gauge the quality of journal articles? And why should we try to weigh scholarly outputs anyway? Well, such appraisal might be attractive and useful when describing the overall … Continue reading What is an impact of an article? (Part I)
Music & Science Lab 