Professor Tia DeNora
BA (West Chester), M.A., PhD (UCSD)
Extension: 3280
Telephone: 01392 723280
Professor of Sociology of Music and Director of Research, Sociology/Philosophy
I work as a cultural sociologist. Most of my research deals with musical topics, with a special focus on music's uses and powers in social life. In collaboration with Dr Gary Ansdell, of Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy, I have recently completed a longitudinal project on music and mental health: http://www.nordoff-robbins.org.uk/musicTherapy/research/project2.html Gary and I are now preparing a three volume 'Triptych' on this work for the Ashgate music list, with a target publication of 2013. A volume of my essays on music has been recently published as Music in Action: Essays in Sonic Ecology in the Ashgate Series, Contemporary Thinkers on Critical Musicology. See: https://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=639&edition_id=13659&title_id=10510&calctitle=1 Gary and I have also recently been contracted by Ashgate to edit an exciting new interdisciplinary book series on Music & Change: ecological perspectives. We launched the series at the last SocArts Symposium: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_138599_en.html
My most recent research interest lies in music, illness and end of life and I have recently contributed an article on that topic to a forthcoming Special Issue of Mortality ('Resounding the Great Divide: theorising Music in Everyday Life at the End of Life'). I am also preparing a manuscript for Sage on Frame Analysis and Everyday Realities.
I have also worked in the area of the sociology of science and technology and have a committed interest in lay expertise and local, or 'bottom-up', methods of knowledge production/transmission. In relation to that work I am currently preparing a book for Sage, provisionally entitled, Reality in Everyday Life. I am also minor co-author on a textbook on music sociology for Polity. The main author is Ian Sutherland, who completed his PhD here in 2010.
Within the SocArts Research group, I direct a very lively research team See: http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/socarts/. Over the past three years, PhD researchers on the 'SocArts' team has published forty-odd articles in refereed journals including Musicǽ Scientifǽ, Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, British Journal of Psychology, Research in Music Education. They have also published or are contracted to publish key chapters in The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (Bergh and DeNora), Oxford Sound Studies Handbook (Hagen and DeNora), Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music (Bergh and DeNora), Oxford Handbook of Audio-visual Studies (Hara and DeNora) and a chapter in the Oxford volume, Musical Imaginations (Sutherland and DeNora).
The SocArts scholars have presented numerous conference papers in more than ten countries (including the ASA, ESA, ESCOM and the World Congress of Music Therapy) and they welcomed speakers from four countries to their own symposia (Keele, UK, Kobe, Aalborg, Casablanca, Virginia, Bergen, Aberdeen, Paris, Eastern Norwegian Research Institute as well as from local community arts programmes). SocArts welcomes Dr Lisa McCormick from Haveford College as a Visiting Scholar for the academic year of 2011-2012. During her time with us, Lisa will be conducting research on composers' late styles.
The SocArts journal, Music and Arts in Action (MAiA) is now in its second year and the most recent issue can be found here: http://musicandartsinaction.net. MAiA is edited by Acord, Bergh and Sutherland.
See SocArts own Webpage at: http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/socarts/
