Fwd: [DMRN-LIST] Open PhD position at KCL in robotic piano expressions for personalised music-heart interventions

Dear all,  Please share this with interested individuals with suitable music and computing skills. The research will involve computing with music and cardiovascular signals in clinical contexts.

PhD position open for "𝘿𝙚𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙥𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙧𝙤𝙗𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙘 𝙥𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙤 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙘-𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨" supervised by myself with Gary Cook and Ildar Farkhatdinov in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Engineering for Personalised Surgery & Intervention (AE-PSI) at King's College London's School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences. This PhD starts in October 2026; the funding includes stipend, fees, and RTSG for 4 years. UKRI allows up to 30% of the cohort to be international. The position is available until filled. The first of three interview rounds begins in March. To apply, see https://www.surgerycdt.com/.

Short description:

This project is centred on creating tailored, goal-oriented, person-specific music-based cardiovascular interventions through the building of autonomous, steerable, dextrous manipulation of robot piano expressions.

       Music has profound effects on human physiology, with great potential for use as adjunctive medicine. Music affects the body through the autonomic nervous system, with direct impact on the heart. However, music's effect on the heart is understudied and underutilised in cardiovascular medicine.

       Humans are wired to react to prosodic features in acoustic stimuli, and trained musicians hone their dexterity to manipulate musical prosody to elicit desired reactions. However, clinical studies involving music in medicine rarely consider the expressive components of music.

       The goal in this project will be to building tools and interfaces to learn and shape nuanced prosodic expressions through a reproducing (robotic) piano. The steering of musical expression will be based on individuals' physiological feedback and designed to achieve target cardiovascular states.

       A clinical application will be with the TOTEM Study using Total Body Positron Emission Tomography at St Thomas' Hospital.

Thank you,

Elaine

__

Elaine Chew | eniale.kcl.ac.uk

Professor of Engineering | King's College London

NMES: Engineering | FoLSM : BMEIS : Cardiovascular Imaging

Becket House, BH5.16 | 1 Lambeth Palace Rd, London, SE1 7EU, UK

Founder/Director, Digital Music Theranostics Lab | cosmos.isd.kcl.ac.uk 

Member of the Music & Acoustics Research Centre | marc.kcl.ac.uk

Music Hubs evaluation: interim report Research report February 2026

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69833572f13d4f72241ca9c0/Music_hubs_evaluation_-_interim_report.pdf

Authors: 

Sehaj Bhatti, Kate Wadsworth, Svetlana Speight, Jane Kerr, Matilda North, Lana MacNaboe, Ciaran Cummins and Alina Haque, National Centre for Social Research

Sustainability skills swapshop: Learn to mend and prolong your clothes' lifecycle!

Sustainability skills swapshop: Learn to mend and prolong your clothes' lifecycle!

 

We would like to invite you to a workshop on visible mending and repair. We will also explore cotton waxing.

The Department of Culture, Communications and Media at the IOE have been organizing "Sustainability Skills Swapshops". These are open sessions led by staff or students on a voluntary basis that involve a demonstration of and/or hands-on participation in a sustainability skill.

This session will be on visible mending, repair, and cotton waxing. It will be run by members of the Crafting Sustainabilities Collective.

• Where: room 938, 20 Bedford WayLondon, England
• When: Thursday, Feb 19 from 1 pm to 5 pm GMT. The session is scheduled for four hours, but you don't have to stay for the whole time. 
• To attend you must reserve a spot through Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/learn-to-mend-and-prolong-your-clothes-lifecycle-tickets-1981092692573?aff=oddtdtcreator

In the session we can support you to learn how to repair:

• Socks: Bring a sock that is thinning or has a manageable hole, and is thus worth saving. We will learn how to repair it together drawing from inspirational examples including our own!
• Holes, e.g., elbow, jeans, children's trainers: There are different patching techniques we can explore together. We will also use a sewing machine, if more suitable.
• Wool sweaters: Using Swiss darning we can bolster thinning material or repair a hole.
• Waxing cotton cloth: There will also be an opportunity to learn about waxing cotton cloth, a traditional and sustainable method of waterproofing, windproofing and toughening outdoor clothing. Demonstrations for waxing will happen at the hour so make sure you are on time if you want to learn this technique e.g. 1pm, 2pm etc.

 

Explore our video collection to explore the techniques we know and can support you with.

 

If you don't have something to mend you are still welcome to attend. There will be opportunities to practice different techniques.

 

What To Bring

• We will supply darning needles and mending wool. At the end of the session, you will be welcome to buy these, if you wish, at their market price.
• If you want to make a patch, we will supply some material, but you are welcome to bring your own.
• For wool repairs, you are welcome to send us an email at craftingsustainabilities@ucl.ac.uk with a picture of your sweater so we can match the wool weight/colour. Alternatively, bring your own wool (ideally this should match the weight of the original material)

Watch this video if you want to explore why repair matters!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iKHr-JnWYA

Fwd: [MUSICOLOGY-ALL] BL PhD Placement ‘Elgar’s letters and digital tools’, deadline 27th February

PhD Placement opportunity in British Library Music Collections: 'Elgar's letters and digital tools', deadline 27th February

The British Library is offering a 3-month Placement (or part-time equivalent) for a PhD student interested in music and the digital humanities to work on making the digitised letters of Edward Elgar more accessible to online audiences. The placement will involve working with HTR (handwriting text recognition) tools and datasets of existing human-typed transcriptions. Elgar was a prolific and idiosyncratic correspondent with messy handwriting and a fondness for ciphers, doodles, and picture postcards — it's an enormous, fantastic corpus with which to experiment with digital tools.

The Placement will be based in the Library's Music Collections with co-supervision from Heritage Made Digital and Digital Research. It is an excellent opportunity for a student to gain valuable, hands-on experience working with digital humanities tools and with music-related special collections.

A link to the advert, together with eligibility criteria and information about applications and funding, can be found here: https://www.bl.uk/services/research-collaboration/phd-placement-scheme. The deadline is 27th February. Informal queries are welcome: please contact frankie.perry@bl.uk.

Fwd: [MUSICOLOGY-ALL] Extended Deadline: IASPM-Norden Early Career Scholar Award

This is a reminder that the deadline for the IASPM-Norden Early Career Scholar Award is approaching.

To give people more time to nominate and/or prepare excerpted material from larger work, we have extended the deadline to February 20, 2026.

The award will be given to a piece of outstanding work that evidences originality of research and scholarly promise. This may concern theoretical, methodological or analytical rigour, originality, and innovation in the study of popular music.

The award celebrates scholarly promise and excellence relative to career stage.

Eligibility: Any manuscript published or (for theses/dissertations) defended in 2024 or 2025.

Self-nominations are welcome, and advisors/supervisors are encouraged to nominate their students.

For more on eligibility and submission guidelines, see the full award description see: https://iaspmnorden.wordpress.com/activities/early-career-scholar-award/2026-2/

Any question can be directed to the award committee secretary, me, at nihu[ at ]cc.au.dk"

Fwd: [MUSICOLOGY-ALL] MMus Scholarships at Royal Holloway University of London

The Department of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London is delighted to announce three scholarships for its MMus programme for the coming academic year, 2026-27. Pathways are available in Performance; Film, TV, and Game Music; Collaborative Piano; Composition; Ethnomusicology and Musicology.
https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-education/departments-and-schools/music/studying-here/postgraduate-taught/

Two Headley Trust scholarships, amounting to £12,000 (that is, the full sum of a year's home student tuition fees) will be available this year. Successful applicants will live and have been educated in the United Kingdom, have an offer to study the MMus in Music, and have achieved or be expected to achieve either a first-class honours degree or first-class levels of excellence in their area of specialism. The latter would include those returning to study, who may demonstrate their talent through submission of a portfolio of professional work.
https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/fees-and-funding/scholarships/headley-trust-scholarship/

We shall also offer one Corky McGuinness award in Musicology. This will provide a tuition fee reduction of £4,000 to a new full-time student with Home fee or International fee status studying for a MMus in Music with a specialism in musicology or ethnomusicology. The successful applicant will have an offer to study the MMus in Music, and have achieved or be expected to achieve a first-class honours degree or equivalent.
https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/fees-and-funding/scholarships/corky-mcguinness-award-in-musicology/

We offer, full-time, part-time and Continuing Professional Development modes of study for all pathways. We welcome applications from all students for these scholarships and more generally for our MMus programme.

We advise all students intending to apply for these awards to submit their application for an MMus place by 15 May 2026 at the latest, to allow time for their application for a place on our programme to be processed. Once they have a conditional or unconditional offer of a place, they may then apply for scholarships via a separate form on our online application system (with a deadline of 15 June 2026 for the scholarship application). Candidates should read and consider application guidelines thoroughly so that the correct materials are included and processing is not delayed.

Further enquiries should be sent to the Director of the MMus programme, Prof. Mark Berry, at mark.berry@rhul.ac.uk.

This email, its contents and any attachments are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. In certain circumstances, it may also be subject to legal privilege. Any unauthorised use, disclosure, or copying is not permitted. If you have received this email in error, please notify us and immediately and permanently delete it. Any views or opinions expressed in personal emails are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Royal Holloway, University of London. It is your responsibility to ensure that this email and any attachments are virus free.

Fwd: [MUSICOLOGY-ALL] Introducing The Nordic Pop Forum

IASPM Norden is excited to launch the Nordic Pop Forum, a new research seminar series dedicated to showcasing recent work in popular music studies across the Nordic countries. Each session will feature a presentation, followed by an open conversation.

The first Nordic Pop Forum will take place on February 25th at 4pm CET, where Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen, adjunct lecturer at the University of Iceland, will present his new book, Icelandic Pop. Then, Today, Tomorrow, Next Week (2025). This session will be chaired by John David Vandevert, PhD student in musicology at Uppsala University.

Our aim with the Nordic Pop Forum is to foster a space of open and engaging conversation, and to build an ongoing scholarly dialogue that brings together researchers and perspectives from across the Nordic popular music community.

We encourage anyone interested in presenting their work or suggesting a colleague whose work has inspired you to get in touch.

The session will be hosted on Zoom, you can sign-up with the following link: https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/62992071975

Find the main announcement at https://iaspmnorden.wordpress.com/activities/the-nordic-pop-forum/
_____________________

John Vandevert
(Secretary-Treasurer, IASPM Norden, 2025-2026)

IOE Public Engagement Masterclass

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/events/2026/feb/ioe-public-engagement-masterclass-professor-evangelos-himonides-and-dr-thomas-moors

IOE Public Engagement Masterclass: Professor Evangelos Himonides and Dr Thomas Moors

Learn how sustained, large-scale public engagement can influence policy and practice, drawing on globally impactful programmes of research.

Fwd: [MUSICOLOGY-ALL] C21MP Research Centre - new discussion forum on Discord

Hi All

As the first step in the launch of the new 21st Century Music Practice Research Centre, we are setting up a Discord Server. If you are interested in understanding the practices of 21st Century music making – any practice, any style, from anywhere in the world – then you should get involved. We're not-for-profit, independent, open-access and international and aim to provide a community, to support you with resources and to run collaborative research projects. We've just launched the Discord server and you can join with this link: https://discord.gg/ebZG2EMy

The server is a platform for discussing all aspects of 21st Century Music Practice – Performance, Composition & Song Writing, Music Production, Practical Music Pedagogy, Practice Research Methods and the Business of Music. We're kicking off with a few videos to get the ball rolling – an introduction to the Research Centre, Litha Efthymiou on documenting composition as practice research and Brendan Anthony on practical music education.

We'll be launching the new website at the beginning of February and the podcast at the end of the month.

If you're new to Discord, you'll have to download the App or register through your browser at https://discord.com/ before you can use the link.

We look forward to meeting you on the Discord server!

Simon Zagorski-Thomas

Let's play! A hybrid seminar exploring music, making, engineering and environmental sustainability in schools

Let's play! A hybrid seminar exploring music, making, engineering and environmental sustainability in schools

Wednesday 14 May (3.30-5.30pm)

 

Nicolas Gold, Ross Purves and Evangelos Himonides, University College London

 

A hybrid seminar jointly hosted by the UCL Science Education Special Interest Group and the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education:

In person attendees in Room 938, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, WC1 0AL

Online attendees, please hold the date and look out for an EventBrite signup link to follow, or get in touch directly with Ross Purves (r.purves@ucl.ac.uk)

 

Session schedule:

3:30: informal play with construction system for in person attendees

4:00: formal presentations for all attendees

4:45: online demo for online audience in one room; in person demo for those onsite in the other room.

5:30: close

 

This hybrid in-person and online session will introduce a new environmentally sustainable construction platform designed to support creative, interdisciplinary learning at the intersection of music, making, and software engineering. Building on eight years of classroom‑based research using LEGO®, robotics sensors, and Raspberry Pi computers to design and program hybrid acoustic–digital musical instruments, our team has recently developed a fully recyclable, low‑cost alternative made from recycled cardboard, eco‑friendly adhesives, and open‑source electronics. Tested thoroughly via a recent five‑week primary school project, the system enables pupils to design robust structures, integrate sensors, and trigger synthesised sound through programmable workflows—while modelling principles of circular design and sustainable fabrication.

 

Participants attending in person will have generous time to enjoy experimenting with the new platform, explore its construction possibilities, interact with the electronic components, and consider opportunities for embedding sustainability, engineering design, and creative STEM/STEAM practice across primary and secondary curricula. Online attendees will have a dedicated, interactive demo of the system on camera – with the opportunity to discuss and ask questions.

All attendees are warmly invited to share expert feedback to help refine the system's educational, scientific, and sustainability applications; an optional anonymous questionnaire will be available for those wishing to contribute.

 

There will also be an opportunity to hear about the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education's recently launched music professional development modules for primary and secondary school teachers, which share similarly interdisciplinary approaches to creative engagement with environmental sustainability.