I’m a scientist and classically trained singer, originally from Perth, Western Australia. I first came to Jyväskylä for the Music, Mind and Technology programme, but then moved to the UK to complete a doctorate in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford, where I still hold an affiliation. I currently teach both Music Education and Music Science students at the University of Jyväskylä, while also conducting research with the Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain.
My work is fundamentally motivated by a desire to understand how music and dance have evolved as human behaviours. To investigate this, I treat music as an embodied, biological phenomenon, and use a variety of methods such as behavioural observation, psychometric questionnaires, motion capture, neuroimaging and eye-tracking, along with cross-cultural and cross-species comparison. The University of Jyväskylä is an incredible international hub for music research, and it’s a privilege to be able to do this work as part of the scientific community here.