It is incredibly exciting that a brand new, world-class 1000 seater concert hall is under construction in the centre of Edinburgh!  The Dunard Centre team are currently based next door to the site on St Andrews Square at the historic Royal Bank of Scotland building, No. 35.  

Here’s an itinerary for the day —  we will keep an online Teams meeting open for remote attendees who would like to drop in on some or all the sessions.

• 10.00, Arrive and meet some of the Dunard team — view their architectural and VR models of the concert hall-to-be!
• 10.30am – midday – Session on developing and communicating complex ideas through figures, tables, and multimedia.

Lunch (BYO) – we could sit in St Andrews Square if the weather is nice(?)

• 1.30 – 2.30pm,  One-hour focused collective writing session.  Choose in advance one small section of write-up – different for everyone, but it can be really productive to use the supportive group space atmosphere to either get into something that is daunting, or just crack on with something that needs attention!
• 3-4pm,   TBC: Either a short info session on creating online courses, OR: Closing group discussion on whatever has come up, OR: something else.

Option to go for a cuppa or a drink nearby if we want to 🙂

Apr 17, 2026

Thanks so much to Yi for kindly sharing her own Interpretive Phenomenological Analytical work-in-progress, including the NVivo walkthrough showing examples of interview transcript data organisation  🙂

Here are Nikki’s session notes:

Qualitative research does not have one analytic purpose.

Sometimes we’re organising patterns, sometimes we’re building explanations, and sometimes we’re interpreting meaning and power. The tools look similar – e.g. you might be working with transcripts; you are doing some kind of coding, you might be using some qualitative analysis software…  but the purpose of the analysis varies in each case.

So when we’re talking about software, the key question isn’t ‘what software do I use?’ but ‘what kind of knowledge am I trying to produce?’

Different kinds of knowledge might include: explanation (theory); understanding (interpretation); critique (power/ideology)… E.g. I constructed categories to explain…  I developed a model that accounts for…   I interpreted discourse to show… I theorised meaning as…

In research, methods have to align with this overall purpose (i.e. What knowledge am I trying to produce?).  Software is a means to assist/support the appropriate method.

We could say there are broadly three ways of doing qualitative analysis in research that is concerned with social life and experience:

1. Thematic analysis

• • Thematic analysis basically seeks out and identifies patterns in data. E.g. ‘What patterns recur across participants?’
  • The idea of using this is to organise meaning across datasets
  • So the output that is possible here is of ‘themes’.           (Data  = ‘information’)

2. Theory building type of analysis (eg Grounded theory)

• • Think processes and mechanisms… The type of key question that would motivate this approach is ‘what explains how [this phenomenon] works?’ For example, ‘how do arts animateurs influence participant behaviour in community settings?’
  • This is a form of analysis to use if you want to build explanatory models
  • It can produce outputs such as: concepts, categories, theory.           (Data = ‘conceptual material’)

3. Interpretive /critical analysis (e.g. IPA, Discourse analysis, Narrative analysis)

• • This form of analysis focuses on complex dimensions – e.g., meaning, language, power.  Applying this to musical scenarios, it might be suitable to ask things like, ‘How is meaning constructed by this venue audience?’ ‘How is power being exercised between musicians in this band?’
  • Where the first two levels are designed to claim some empirically traceable explanation in the form of either explanatory or mechanistic/processual tokens of knowledge, this forms of analytical method produces interpretations – the nature of the output is knowledge in the form of understanding.                 (Data = ‘meaningful discourse’)

In all cases, it’s essential important to keep an audit trail – documentary evidence in the form of your own records, reflection, coding decisions – for sense-checking and transparency.  These are the foundations of any qualitative analysis, and they rather determine the basic quality and power of resulting arguments/interpretation/claims.  Software can be very good for this process of documenting and making your own audit trail:  but it’s only ever as reliable as the people using it!

	THEMATIC	THEORY BUILDING	INTERPRETIVE or CRITICAL
Core aim of your project of work:	Organise meaning	Explain phenomena	Interpret meaning
Analytical ‘logic’:	Patterning	Modelling	Reading/interpretation
Which means your data are being treated as…	Information	Conceptual material	Meaningful discourse
What you are doing with the codes:	Organising data	Building concepts	Structuring your own (your teams’) reading
What comes out?:	Descriptive analytic themes	Explanatory theory/models	Critically engaged interpretations

Software like NVivo can support all three through different  ways of using it.

• For basic thematic, it’s  a primary analysis tool (coding, themes, queries, patterning)
• For theory-building it can be used to organise the conceptual workflow (category building, memoing, modelling)

For interpretive / critical analysis, it’s sort of similarly an organisation tool, for retrieval and comparison of data memos, annotations, etc.

A few items of suggested reading:

Feb 28, 2026

With a mix of project stages and experience in the room, it felt useful to share experiences about research ethics!  Research ethics means: the application of ethical principles to research activities.  UoE policy, in line with UKRI (the body that allocates government spending on research and innovation via research councils), names the key principles of research ethics:

• Dignity and Respect for Persons: Protecting the autonomy, rights, and dignity of individuals involved in research.
• Beneficence and Non-maleficence: Maximizing benefits while minimizing harm to participants, communities, and the environment.
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: Ensuring fairness in the recruitment of participants and the distribution of research benefits and burdens.
• Integrity, openness and transparency: Conducting research with honesty, accountability, and transparency.
• Responsibility and accountability: Considering the broader societal and environmental implications of research.

What this means for specific, niche research projects that explore situated music-related phenomena… well, it depends.   We talked about our experiences of seeking ethical approval for projects ranging from the study of trauma related to music used in warfare, to systematic interview studies exploring institutional and contextual factors impacting musical performance anxiety, to observational research requiring fieldwork recordings and international travel. We discussed the separation of ethics-approval-protocol from the thinking work of interrogating the true ethical implications of your research project.

Depending on the specific research project, the task of preparing, explaining, revising and applying ethical considerations to a plan of work might also articulate with quite a range of policy documents – these can change often, and even the review committees may find it hard to stay up to date on research data management, travel guidelines, student attendance and registration regulations, and so on.

There is a peculiar time-warping, dialogic nature behind the written statements that are needed to bring to the surface – and then justify – the ethical considerations made about a research project.  We noticed that the depth of reflection and the communication skills involved in this task are powerful. The experience and skills to engage effectively in University research ethics review are valuable, and overlap to a great extent with those needed to create effective research design, make other applications in general (e.g. funding, career progression), and publish peer-reviewed academic work.

Jan 29, 2026

Meetings this semester:

• Mon 1 Sep, 15:30-16:30 – [Before the new semester really starts – let’s think of this one as a late-summer session…. ]  Hazel will test-run her conference presentation for the Society for Music Production Research taking place next week in Victoria, BC.  The presentation shares Hazel’s model of music-related ‘listening’ as both a cognitive and communicative process for sound production researchers and practitioners.
• Thu 18 Sep, 15:00-16:30 – Welcome back – introductory session to reconvene as a group plus work shared by Peter (conference presentation test-run: Seeing People Through Instruments: Interdisciplinary Avenues Towards Organology as Social Historical Science)
• Mon 29 Sep, 15:00-16:30 – Hands up if you think that a ‘situated approach’ is important in your research! Christoph Seibert’s chapter in Music and Consciousness (2019, eds. Herbert, Clarke & Clarke) maps out some ideas for what ‘situated approaches’ can and can’t do for music research. Let’s discuss, with our own individual and collective interests in mind.
• Thu 23 Oct, 15:00-16:30 – Positionality in improvisation pedagogy (Una) – draft article share session
• Thu 6 Nov, 15:00-16:30 – Situated music research design/methods. If there were such a course of study… What skills? What knowledge? What training opportunities? Let’s dream big!!
• Mon 1 Dec, 15:00-16:30 –  Friendly feedback and analysis support!  Yi will share IPA analysis-in-progress of her interview data about MPA, collected from 18 University instrumental tutors and their students.
• ANOTHER SUGGESTION:   Study retreat day on Thursday 8 January, 2025?

All meetings hybrid as usual:  Please email Nikki or Una if you would like to attend, or check the MS Teams page.

Sep 1, 2025

Writing and publishing academic journal articles – discussion session led by Nikki

In a nutshell 

• One idea, land the contribution. 

• Check that the contribution is a solid and original one. 

• In figuring out your contribution, think about keywords and titles. These are really important. 

*Search with your chosen keywords to make sure the results match the area you’re aiming for!*  

Choosing the target journal.   

You can have the article first, and find where to publish.  Then revise accordingly.  Or, have a target journal and then write the article to fit.  First is probably better. 

Guidance 

Helpful ECR guide to getting published https://career-advice.jobs.ac.uk/career-development/research-careers/a-guide-to-publishing-for-early-career-researchers/ 

Jobs.ac.uk Research Publications planner (PDF) https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/staffdevelopment/documents/rs-hub/research-publications-planner.pdf  

Use visual tables / charts to plan your outputs. Remember the ‘one idea, land the contribution’ mantra. Label the ‘idea’ for yourself , identify what portion of data you’re using for it, choose your target  journal. 

Then: Keep stuff moving through the pipeline.  Something in prep, something under review, something in revision. 

You should know about the important stuff that sits behind the fun research: 

You need to know about open research and how sneaky academic publishing is.    

In the VALID cases of publishing, payments to publishers go both ways: subscription payments (allowing people to read) and open access article processing charges (allowing people to publish) 

https://library.ed.ac.uk/research-support/publish-research/open-access/publisher-discounts 

In the BOGUS cases of publishing, you can accidentally undermine your own work (and name) if you publish in predatory, unscrupulous journals:   

https://library.ed.ac.uk/research-support/publish-research/scholarly-communications/predatory-or-bogus-journals  

Things never to dismiss: 

• The Aims and Scope of a journal matter 

• The journal’s reporting instructions matter 

• It can take a really long time 

In the VALID cases, Editorial Board members and peer-reviewers are essentially volunteers. They are not remunerated for their time spent working on the journal by the publishers. They are doing what they do around the rest of the jobs/life.  So be polite and be patient. 

Mar 27, 2025

Group discussion with Morag on her fascinating journal article-in-progress on the Berlin School of Music Sociology.  Topics arising including:

• Meaningful dialogue is essential for intellectual work, it often happens in corridors
• Some comparison of approaches across institutions (UK, Austria, China) of the situations where academic dialogue happens about Music
• How music scholarship particularly requires talk and multi-perspective process
• How to make the decision about directing the specific proposition of a journal article on a complex, broad exposition
• Whether to engage obliquely or directly with the target of a critical proposition
• Identifying the intersection of institutional forces, publication norms and cultural expectations around language use About Music

Great session, thank you Morag! Looking forward to seeing the article in print 🙂

Mar 27, 2025

Thu 23 Jan, 2.30 – 4pm.  Topic: What situations of listening require musical expertise and how is this expertise communicated? Led by Hazel (PhD candidate researching communication between performers and engineers in classical music recording and production)

Thu 27 Feb, 2.30pm – 4pm. Topic: Writing and publishing research about music in journals  (Professional development session)

Thu 27 Mar, 2.30pm – 4pm. Topic: Dialogue as methodology in music research. Group feedback and peer-review – article by Morag, on the Berlin School of music sociology.

Thu 24 Apr, 14:30-16:00 – no study group this week

Thu 29 May, 14:30-16:00 – Musicianship in the situation of the primary classroom – Nikki, Yi, Rebecca? – sharing work on this project following presentation at the Sempre 2025 conference in Manchester in April.

UPCOMING:

• UPDATED Thu 26 Jun, 14:30-16:00 –  Does the jazz musician leadership metaphor still work?  Mark’s PhD research showed how trans-cultural pressures affect band leadership in the contemporary music industry context. Are there comparable consequences in other workplaces?

 

All meetings are hybrid: EFI 2.63 (usually) and online in MS Teams. Email Nikki or Una for more information!

Dec 19, 2024

Welcome / welcome back!

Meetings this semester:

• Fri 13 Sep, 11-12:30 – Summer conference debrief!  Let’s re-live the memories of sunny weather, intellectual stimulation, exciting new professional contacts…
• Fri 18 Oct, 11-12:30 – ‘Research and research education in music – disciplinary or interdisciplinary approach?’
• Thu 14 Nov, 14.30 – 16.00 – Auditory expertise in recording situations – what is musical expertise vs ‘technical’ expertise?
• Thu 12 Dec, 14.30 – 16.00 – ‘Plays well with others’  – how do social dynamics in (esp. touring) bands affect musical performance situations?

All meetings hybrid as usual:  Please email Nikki or Una if you would like to attend, or check the MS Teams page.

Sep 2, 2024

What experiences of creative arts education could foster the future-proof leadership skills needed for the next generation of artists and musicians to thrive? What features of an (inclusive) creative education environment could meet or exceed these needs?  This study day includes discussion sessions, presentations and responses to enable conversations about music education, participatory arts and inclusion.

Participants include postgraduate students and researchers (established and early career), with contributions from invited specialist education researchers, Rebecca Berkley (University of Reading) and Guro Gravem Johansen (Ingesund Music College at Karlstad University), this study day builds on regular meetings since September 2022 of the Musical Situations study group. With research expertise including music psychology, participatory music arts and health, and performance research, our discussions begin from the shared view that situated communication and interpersonal relationships are of key significance to creative arts education.

We warmly welcome all those with interests in the topic from relevant intersecting domains, such as: the impact of digital and learning technologies, including creative-arts specific generative technologies; non-institutional/marginal community arts experiences and expertise; current school classroom arts education practices; current HE practice in Music and related arts programme delivery; EDI concerns in both HEIs and creative industries.

Broad aims for the day

• A chance to bring together researchers who are concerned with development of new ideas for arts (music) education training and skills that generate inclusive knowledge generation and artistic practice.
• Enable and benefit from contributions to the topic from a range of perspectives through PGR and ERC participation
• Come away with a better understanding of where ‘music’ education training and ‘arts’ education training currently sit in relation to one another, and who are the stakeholders in this discourse

For more info or to let us know that you’d like to join for some/all of the day, please email Nikki or Una.

Schedule

10.00 – 10.15am  – Welcome and intro to the theme of ‘creative arts education future’ (Nikki and Una)

10.15 – 11am – Micro-updates / introductions – a chance to share what research-related activities people have been up to in the past 2-4 weeks (Invitation to everyone)

11.00 – 11.45am –  Researcher development – the proposal writing treadmill!   Informal sharing from Nikki, Christian and Una about recent experiences preparing grant applications.  Discussion with everyone about how this type of writing activity relates to all-round professional researcher development.  https://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers-professional-development/about-the-vitae-researcher-development-framework

11.45 – 12.45 pm   – Lunch

12.45 – 1.15 pm –  Return to the theme of ‘creative arts education future’ with 3-minute pitches:  If you could change one single thing about your own music education experiences/background, what would it be?  (Invitation to everyone.)

1.15 – 2pm     –   Rebecca Berkley (Associate Professor in Music Education at the University of Reading, UK) is an outstanding choral director. Her current research examines the significance (and challenges) of developing fluency through musical literacies to support inclusive practice in formal and informal music education, with a focus on professional practice and leadership training for musicians working in education. Rebecca led the BERA-funded research project, Musicianship for Teachers, teaching classroom musicianship to general primary classroom instructors. She is the director of the Sing for Pleasure Musicianship for Singers programme.

2 – 2.45 pm    –   Guro Gravem Johansen (Professor of Music Education at Ingesund Music College at Karlstad University) specialises in instrumental practising, and learning and teaching in jazz and improvised music. She is Editor-in-Chief for the peer-reviewed journal Nordic Research in Music Education, and wrote the book “Children’s guided participation in jazz improvisation: A study of the ‘Improbasen’ learning centre’ (Routledge, 2021).

2.45 – 3pm  – Break

3.15 – 4pm –  Discussion

4pm – Close

Apr 10, 2024

Ethnomusicological insights on situated musicality

Fantastic final session of the year, learning about Christian Ferlaino’s ethnomusicological research on sound-making practices and meaning among various communities scattered across the central Tyrrhenian part of Calabria, Italy.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic data, Christian’s work demonstrates how ‘those who use sounding objects show refined musical abilities, which are expressed through making sound rather than music’. Ferlaino suggests that the skilful behaviour of individuals in these communities challenges any definition of musicality that holds an implicit distinction between musician and non-musician.

‘For those who keep using sounding objects throughout their lives, making sound is a leisure activity, a way of expressing oneself through sound, similarly like making music. The sound of these devices also has an ecological component that allows people to establish relationships with the environment and dialogue with the surrounding natural soundscape. Sounding objects are also a place for experimentation for [so-called] musicians and non-musicians who use them throughout their lives. […] The fact that the abilities ascribed to musicality manifest also in non-musical contexts, as discussed in this paper, calls for a more encompassing definition of musicality, one that is not bound to a specific definition of music.’

The discussion afterwards explored these ideas in relation to a range of connected ideas: D/deaf and signed musics; Trevarthen’s Communicative Musicality; Ian Cross’s contributions to theorizing music and communication research in the field of music psychology; Ruth Finnegan’s anthropological insights of art as multi-modal experience, and C. Thi Nguyen’s concept of art as process.  It was great! Happy festive holidays, everyone.

Dec 8, 2023