Meet our staff

Associate Dean of Research and Enterprise & Director, Centre for Music Performance Research

Dr Jane Ginsborg read music at the University of York, and trained as a singer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Following a successful freelance career as a professional singer and singing teacher, she studied psychology with the Open University, gaining a BA degree with first class honours, and completed her ESRC-funded PhD in 1999 at Keele University. Jane is a Chartered Psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society. She carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Sheffield and has lectured in psychology at the University of Manchester, at Leeds Metropolitan University, and for the Open University.

She has published widely on expert musicians' approaches to practising and memorizing, and won the British Voice Association's Van Lawrence Award in 2002 for her research on singers' memorizing strategies. Current research interests include expert musicians' preparation for performance, collaborative music making and musicians’ health.

Selected publications

Ginsborg, J., Kreutz, G., Thomas, M., and Williamon, A. (2009). Healthy behaviours in music performance and non-music performance students. Health Education. 109 (3). 242-258

Ginsborg, J. (2009). Beating time: the role of kinaesthetic learning in the development of mental representations for music. In A. Mornell (Ed.) Art in Motion. Vienna: Peter Lang.

Ginsborg, J. and Sloboda, J. A. (2007). Singers' recall for the words and melody of a new, unaccompanied song. Psychology of Music, 35 (3), 419-138.

Ginsborg, J., Chaffin, R. & Nicholson, G. (2006). Shared performance cues in singing and conducting: A content analysis of talk during practice. Psychology of Music, 34 (2), 167-192.

Ginsborg, J. (2004a). Strategies for memorising music. In A. Williamon (ed.), Musical Excellence: Strategies and techniques to enhance performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ginsborg, J. (2004b) Singing by heart: memorisation strategies for the words and music of songs. In: J. W. Davidson (ed.) The music practitioner: exploring practices and research in the development of the expert music performer, teacher and listener. Ashgate Press.

British Psychological Society (BPS)

British Voice Association (BVA)

European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM)

Music and Science Online

International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC)

Music Performance Research (MPR)

Society for Education, Music, and Psychology Research (SEMPRE)

Centre for Music Performance Research