We hold these MSL (short for Music and Science Lab) sessions every two weeks, on Tuesdays at 1:30 to 3:00 pm (U.K. time). We are trialling hybrid meetings this year; in-person attendees will meet in Durham (see locations below), while remote participants will be sent a Zoom link to join.

We support and promote empirical research on music and science and do this via discussions, presentations, readings, getting to know methods, techniques, and research designs and themes and working together to improve the present research. The members represent a diverse range of academic career stages, from faculty members to MA students, PhD students, and postdocs to occasional undergraduate students.

In our lab meetings, we are supportive, welcoming and inclusive and every participant can contribute equally to the meetings. We typically start with casual, informal updates from each participant. We then have a guest speaker or a topic of a discussion lined up (or both) and we also we welcome proposals for short ideas and presentation that benefit from the collective feedback. These can be pre-arranged or proposed on the spot.

Welcome!

17 January in Music Technology Studio:

Introductions, WEIRD paper planning, Journal club:

Savage PE, Loui P, Tarr B, Schachner A, Glowacki L, Mithen S, Fitch WT. (2021) Music as a coevolved system for social
bonding. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44, e59: 1–22. doi:10.1017/S0140525X20000333

31 January in Elvet Riverside (ER) 146:

-Short discussion about WEIRD paper plans (15 min)

-Short pilot of Aliyah R.’s experiment for Research Experience (15 min)

-Presentation + discussion from Dr Michael Schutz about his ongoing IAS project (Understanding musical emotion: Deconstructing “natural” structural cue); in particular please have a look at the paper in Psychology of Music: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03057356211046375

14 February in Elvet Riverside (ER) 146:

Cancelled due to strike action

28 February in Music Technology Studio:

Reproducible research session

14 March in Elvet Riverside (ER) 146:

Prof Judy Edworthy (Plymouth) – in-person visit and invited talk on auditory alarms

Easter Term:

2 May in PG28:

Invited talk (via Zoom) by Dr Psyche Loui (Northeastern)

16 May in PG28:

Katie Vishwanath’s presentation (absolute pitch/tempo across cultures PhD project)

30 May in PG28: 

Nashra Ahmad’s presentation (entrainment PhD project)

Discussion: The peer review process

6 June in PG28:

Journal club: Mehr, S. A., Krasnow, M. M., Bryant, G. A., & Hagen, E. H. (2021). Origins of music in credible signaling. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44, e60.

28 June from 2-3 pm (location TBC):

Presentation from Petr Nuska, end-of-year celebrations