About Jane
Associate Director of Research
Programme Leader, Research Degrees
Director, Centre for Music Performance Research
Professor Jane Ginsborg read music at the University of York and studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Following a successful career as a singer, she graduated in psychology from the Open University, and undertook her ESRC-funded doctoral research at Keele University under the supervision of John Sloboda. During this period she won a British Psychological Society award to study with Anders Ericsson at Florida State University. In 2002 she won the British Voice Association’s Van Lawrence Award for her research on singers’ memorizing strategies. Between 1999 and 2005, when she started working at RNCM, she taught psychology at the University of Manchester and Leeds Metropolitan (now Beckett) University, and was a post-doctoral research fellow at Sheffield University; there, she contributed to and edited a book on language and social disadvantage (Clegg & Ginsborg, 2006). She taught developmental psychology for the Open University for 14 years. Her AHRC-funded project “Interactive performance for musicians with a hearing impairment” (in collaboration with the University of Liverpool) was shortlisted for a THE Best Research Project (2013) and she was Principal Investigator for the “Better Practice” strand of the Conservatoires UK-wide AHRC-funded Musical Impact project (2014-2018), which sought to promote healthy lifestyles and practice for musicians from the earliest years throughout their education and training and into the profession. In addition to her research, supervision and teaching, Jane is much in demand as a speaker. She was Orion Visitor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, in February 2023, where she gave several lectures, and in the academic year 2024-2025 she spoke at Royal Holloway, University of London; the Music Teachers National Association conference in Minneapolis, MI; and the Art in Motion conference in Munich. She regularly gives keynote lectures (most recently for the Germany Music Psychology Society in Freiburg-im-Breisgau, The Musicians’ Health & Performance Nordic Conference in Odense, Denmark; and the International Symposium on Performance Science in Shanghai). She was Editor-in-Chief of Musicae Scientiae from 2018 to 2025 and is often asked to review articles, books, book proposals and grant applications.
Research
Current and Future Research
Jane is currently involved in several collaborative research projects. One, with Dr Susanna Cohen (Bar-Ilan University, Israel), follows up a study of the experiences of self-employed freelance orchestral musicians during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022), and focuses on the experiences of older professional musicians and their transition into retirement, with the aim of making recommendations that can be implemented by employers, managers and promoters as well as musicians themselves. Another, with members of the Health Literacy Consortium, an international team of musicians, educators and researchers, follows up the construction, development and validation of the Musicians’ Health Literacy Questionnaire (MHL-Q19), which was designed specifically to measure health literacy for music performance. The purpose of the project, which is being conducted in Australia, is to improve the training of musicians for long and healthy careers.
Research Areas
- Social and cognitive processes
- Memorization of music and, specifically, the words and music of songs
- Musicians’ health and wellbeing
- Older musicians and those involved in supporting musicians’ transition from the music profession into retirement
- Research methods, e.g., observational and experimental methods
External Research Roles
- Visiting Tutor, MSc in Music Psychology, Department of Psychology, Keele University (2005 – 2006)
- Visiting Tutor, MSc in Music Psychology, Department of Psychology, Keele University (2003 – 2004)
- Senior Lecturer in Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Faculty of Health, Leeds Beckett University (2002 – 2005)
- Research Associate, Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield (2000 – 2002)
- Part-time Honorary Lecturer and Visiting Tutor, distance-learning course: Language and Communication in Children (LACIC), University of Sheffield (2000 – 2006)
- Associate Lecturer in Child Development, Faculty of Education and Language Studies, Open University Milton Keynes (2000 – 2913)
- Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Manchester (1999 – 2000)
- Part-time tutor, Department of Psychology, Keele University (1998 – 1999)
Funded Research Projects
Professor Jane Ginsborg has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for two major projects, the Leverhulme Trust for an International Academic Fellowship, and the Colt Foundation, among others.
Teaching
Undergraduate Teaching
- Level 1 (Year 1): Artist Development 1: Health and Wellbeing for Musicians
- Level 2 (Year 2): Music in Context 2: Introduction to Music Psychology
- Level 3 (Year 4): Performance Studies
- Level 3 (Years 3 and 4): Elective: Applied Music Psychology: Theory, Practice and Research
- Level 3 (Year 4): Practical Pedagogy
- Level 3 (Year 4): Independent Research Project
Postgraduate Teaching
- Research Methods in Music Psychology
- Supervisor: Music Psychology Projects Major (12,000 words) and Minor (8,000 words)
- Lecture Recital
- Programme Leader, Research Degrees (MPhil and PhD, validated and awarded by Manchester Metropolitan University)
Research Supervision
Current supervision of PhDs:
- Ellen Casey
- Alex Chapman
- Eleanor Guenault
Completed PhDs:
- Akiho Suzuki, Development and testing of an online practice intervention for tertiary piano students
Research Outputs
Written Outputs
Walking a Fine Line: The Role of Activism in the Lives of Female Brass Players
Guenault, E., Habron-James, J. & Ginsborg, J., 2026, In: Frontiers in Communication.A Brass-Playing Identity: How Do Gendered Attitudes and Practices Influence Twenty-first Century Brass Players?
Guenault, E., Ginsborg, J. & Habron-James, J., 2025, In: Journal of World Popular Music. 12, 1, p. 120-149Development of the Musicians’ Health Literacy Questionnaire (MHL-Q19)
Ginsborg, J., Wijsman, S., Ackermann, B. J., Baadjou, V., De Lisle, R., Rennie-Salonen, B., Visentin, P. & Guptill, C., 2025, In: International Journal of Music, Health and Wellbeing. p. 1–24Entering the Profession: The Psychological Challenges of Transitioning from College to begin a Career as a Teacher
Ginsborg, J., 2025, In: American Music Teacher.Looking Backwards and Forwards: The Psychological Challenges of Transitioning from a Teaching Career to Retirement
Ginsborg, J., 2025, In: American Music Teacher.Music students’ health and health education: A study in South Africa
Ginsborg, J., Panebianco, C. & Matei, R., 2025, In: International Journal of Music Education.Validity Testing of the Health Literacy Questionnaire on a Sample of Musicians in the UK
Ginsborg, J., Matei, R., Ripani, G. & Phillips, K., 2025, In: Psychology of Music.11. Memory for Music: Research and Practice for Performers
Ginsborg, J., 20 Jun 2024, Psychological Perspectives on Musical Experiences and Skills: Research in the Western Balkans and Western Europe.16. How do European and Western Balkans Conservatoires Help Music Students with their Health and Well-being?
Matei, R. & Ginsborg, J., 20 Jun 2024, Psychological Perspectives on Musical Experiences and Skills: Research in the Western Balkans and Western Europe.Developing an Online Intervention to Equip Tertiary Piano Students With Skills and Strategies for Effective Practice
Suzuki, A., Ginsborg, J., Phillips, M. & Franklin, Z., Jan 2024, In: Music & Science. 7, p. 20592043241262612 1 p.Professional Activity
Public Presentations and Performance
“My brain is too loud”: Exploring the interconnection between musicians’ neurodivergence combinations and auditory processing experiences
Chapman, A. (Speaker / presenter), Sparkes, P. (Collaborator), Ginsborg, J. (Collaborator) & Heaton, P. (Collaborator)
“I get sucked into the atmosphere”: Neurodivergent audiences’ auditory processing experiences in live music settings.
Chapman, A. (Speaker / presenter), Sparkes, P. (Collaborator), Ginsborg, J. (Collaborator) & Heaton, P. (Collaborator)
Performance science in practice: Healthy performance in challenging times (International Symposium on Performance Science, Shanghai, China)
Ginsborg, J. (Speaker / presenter)
Educating musicians for healthy music making across the lifespan (The Musicians’ Health and Performance 5th Nordic Conference, Odense)
Ginsborg, J. (Speaker / presenter)
Once a musician, always a musician: 30 years of research in music psychology (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Musikpsychologie, Freiburg-im-Breisgau)
Ginsborg, J. (Speaker / presenter)
How musicians thrive and flourish: Healthy music making through the life course (Art in Motion, “The Drive to Thrive”, Munich)
Ginsborg, J. (Speaker / presenter)
SEMPRE annual conference 2025, RNCM
Baczkowski, D. (Organiser), Phillips, M. (Chair), Ginsborg, J. (Chair) & Lamont, A. (Chair)
Lifelong healthy music making (Music Teachers’ National Association Conference, Minneapolis)
Ginsborg, J. (Speaker / presenter)
PhD Supervision and Examination
Supervising Akiho Suzuki: ‘Developing an online intervention to equip tertiary piano students with skills and strategies for effective practice’
Ginsborg, J. (Examiner)
Other
“I become hyperfocused on the music and almost live in it”: A Qualitative Analysis of Neurodivergent Musicians’ Auditory Processing Experiences in Everyday Life and Live Music Settings. (Poster)
Chapman, A. (Participant), Sparkes, P. (Participant), Ginsborg, J. (Participant) & Heaton, P. (Participant)