Research

Research in Music focuses on understanding music and sound in a global context as expressive cultural communication. Music researchers decipher music and its cultural codes as a reflection of societal values, and as a force that shapes them. At UofT Music our research and creative outputs include books, articles, reviews, musical scores, performances, recordings, media objects, theatre productions, conferences, colloquia, and more. Our curiosity- and creativity-driven research encompasses humanities and social-sciences disciplines, music composition and performance, and many interdisciplinary fields such as music technology & digital media, and music & health sciences. We seek consistently to achieve excellence across a broad range of research and creative professional activities, providing significant academic and artistic experiences and outcomes.

Explore this page, as well as Moments & Outcomes, to learn more about Research at UofT Music. The current Associate Dean of Research is Prof. Steven Vande Moortele, and he can be reached at music.research@utoronto.ca. Dr. Ely Lyonblum, Research Grants Officer for the Faculty of Music, assists our researchers in finding, applying for, and administering appropriate grants to support their research. His contact is ely.lyonblum@utoronto.ca.

 

Research Ethics

Any research involving human participants that is conducted by University of Toronto faculty members and students must be reviewed and approved by the appropriate Research Ethics Board. Please note that the REB submission and review process is now fully online: details of the REB process, including the link to submit applications, may be found here. Once submitted online, all Faculty of Music Ethics applications will be automatically forwarded to the Associate Dean, Research for review and approval; if an application requires revision, it will be returned to the researcher for amendment before approval. Tips for preparing REB applications may be found here.
 
 

Postdoctoral Fellows and Visiting Scholars

Postdoctoral Fellows

Postdoctoral fellows are valued members of the UofT community, making important contributions to our research and educational environment. Each year the Faculty of Music considers multiple requests for the support of applications to tri-council postdoctoral opportunities, including the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships and the SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowships in the social sciences and humanities.

Prospective candidates should first be in touch with a potential postdoctoral supervisor in the Faculty of Music. Application materials submitted by the internal deadline (typically in mid-August) are vetted by members of the Research Committee to determine the Faculty of Music’s capacity to support applications in advance of the external nomination deadlines. Please contact the Associate Dean Research at music.research@utoronto.ca for details of the annual deadline and submission requirements.

Visiting Scholars

The UofT Faculty of Music welcomes inquiries from researchers and artists who are interested in conducting scholarly/artistic research on a visiting basis and working with members of our esteemed faculty for a limited period of time. Applications may be submitted at any time and will be reviewed periodically by committee.

 

Music Library

The University of Toronto’s Music Library, among the finest in North America, is a vital support to research activity at the Faculty of Music. Please visit the Music Library site to learn more about its outstanding collections, services, and research initiatives.

 

Our Research Centres and Institutes

UofT Music is home to several research centres and institutes:

  • CSNCM (Centre for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Music) 
  • ICM (Institute for Canadian Music) 
  • MaHRC (Music and Health Research Collaboratory)

 

CSNCM (Centre for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Music)

The CSNCM at UofT Music is a centre of excellence for the study of all aspects of music in the long nineteenth century (c. 1789-1914). Bringing together scholars from musicology, music theory, performance studies, and other fields of enquiry, it intends to build collaborative relationships with other scholars across the humanities at the University of Toronto and with scholars of nineteenth-century music, dance, art history, and cultural history at other universities in Canada and beyond. Within the Faculty of Music the CSNCM fosters graduate teaching, advising, and mentoring related to nineteenth-century topics or repertoires, and coordinates lectures, reading groups, study days, symposia, and conferences. The current CSNCM director is Dr. Steven Vande Moortele.

 

ICM (Institute for Canadian Music)

The ICM at UofT Music is a national leader in promoting, supporting, and producing scholarship in Canadian music studies. ICM was established in 1984 with an endowment from the late Floyd Chalmers to encourage research and study in the field of music in Canada. The endowment also created the Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music, the holder of which acts as director of the institute. The current Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music and ICM director is Dr. Robin Elliott.

 

 MaHRC (Music and Health Research Collaboratory)

MaHRC is a synergistic and collaborative group of researchers exploring connections of sound to the human experience of health. Officially established in the Faculty of Music in 2012, MaHRC continues the process of establishing affiliations, appointing members, and activating projects. The focus of MaHRC is on music (sound) and health broadly defined by five overlapping and inter-related spheres: (1) Therapy and Medicine, (2) Body, Brain, Mind, (3) Society and Culture, (4) Music In Human Development, and (5) Science and Health of Performance. These five spheres represent clusters of disciplines or fields of study and specializations.

The vision of MaHRC is aligned with the Strategic Research Plan of UofT. In particular, the vision of MaHRC is to (1) Promote: Healthy People, Healthy Communities, and a Healthy World through music, and to (2) Engage: Minds, Culture, and Values around music. MaHRC's goal is to bring together interdisciplinary teams of researchers to collaborate on questions of fundamental importance to our vision, through discussions in colloquia and workshops, identifying fundamental questions and finding ways to move these questions into a research agenda.

 

Affiliations with other UofT Research Units

UofT Music has strong affiliations with many research units and programs across the University, including the JHI (the Jackman Humanities Institute), the Munk School of Global Affairs, the CMS (Centre for Medieval Studies), PIMS (Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies), Massey College's Book Heritage and Print Culture Collaborative Program, and OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education). More recent links have developed with the Rotman School of Management, the Martin Prosperity Institute, the Mind Brain Behaviour Hive, the Faculty of Law, Centre for Innovation Law, the iSchool Faculty of Information, the McLuhan Culture and Technology Program, and through MaHRC with the Faculty of Medicine and the UHN (University Health Network), the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, CPIN (Collaborative Program in Neuroscience),  and the Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development.