Alex Chapman
Saturday Receptionist
Email: [email protected]
Alex works at the reception desk on a Saturday during Junior RNCM, acting as the first point of contact for staff, students, caregivers, and visitors. Their role includes:
- Ensuring all Junior RNCM students and caregivers have a central point of contact for non-course related enquiries for their time at college.
- Ensuring the RNCM safeguarding rules are adhered to, and escalating any issues to management, including the Head of Junior Programmes.
- Responding to queries regarding Junior RNCM and events.
- Providing information about the college to concert-goers, and possible accessible solutions to queries that the college typically offers.
- Receiving and redirecting queries to appropriate members of staff
- Handling deliveries to the building
Alex is a Doctoral Researcher in Music Psychology at the RNCM. They are also an active composer, having had pieces played by the BBC Philharmonic, Opera North, and Aberdeen Jazz Festival. Outside of research, composition, and the RNCM, Alex freelances with various organisations in access support roles and assists with disability rights data reviews for campaigns to improve education, society, and UK industries.
Current and Future Research
Alex is currently a Researcher-in-Residence with Drake Music Scotland as part of their doctoral project. They are funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a series of studies focusing on neurodivergent musicians and audiences’ management of auditory processing challenges in public spaces and live music settings.
Another part of Alex’s work involves collaboration with various teams nationally and internationally to research into technological advancements and neurodivergence, neurodivergent musician experiences and accessibility within professional environments, and UK music venues’ alignment with the Equality Act.
Research Areas
- Music Psychology
- Auditory Processing Challenges
- Neurodivergence
- Live Music
- Disability Models
Research Funding
Summary c. £101,216 funding over the last 3 years, including the following RNCM research projects:
c. £77,766 – Arts and Humanities Research Council for Collaborative Doctoral Award with Drake Music Scotland.
c. £1,500 – RNCM Belonging, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Funding for experimentation into the Sennheiser MobileConnect system for RNCM venues.
Selected Outputs
Selection of Peer-Reviewed Conference Presentations:
Chapman, Alex. (2024, 03-06 July). How do you hear music?: A qualitative enquiry into autistic individuals’ auditory experiences in live music settings [Paper presentation]. 12th Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, York, UK.
Chapman, Alex. (2023, 09 November). Sennheiser MobileConnect: Experimentation into Auditory Accessible Technology for the Aid of RNCM Venues. 9th Meeting of the Northern Network for Empirical Music Research, Leeds, UK.
