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Preparing for a music psychology course
I have been getting some nice emails of late from people who are considering a music psychology postgraduate degree, and who want to know how best to prepare for such a course. So today I am going to lay out a few pieces of general advice for postgraduate students thinking about taking up music psychology. The first important point to make is that each course is different. I work at the University of Sheffield which boasts 3 courses in music psychology that focus on the science of understanding how music affects the brain and body (with 1 focusing specifically on education and 1 designed specially for musicians). The advice I give…
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Conference report: The impact of musical expertise
This week I have been to the British Psychological Society (BPS) Cognitive Section conference, thanks to a very helpful bursary from SCONET (UK Social Cognition Network and Training Scheme). The meeting was held at Keele University which is something of a Mecca for music psychology as John Sloboda worked there for many years. As part of the BPS conference, Alex Lamont had organised a symposium called ‘Cognition and Music’, which featured talks by herself, Philip Fine from the University of Buckingham and Cara Featherstone from the University of Leeds. I decided to travel to Keele the night before the meeting in order to be fresh and ready to go for…
