External Research Fellows
External Research Fellows hold academic appointments at other recognized universities who have a demonstrated interest in the research agenda and/or activities of the Laurier Centre for Music in the Community, who request to the Director to be an External Research Fellow, and whose request has been accepted by Laurier's Standing Committee on Research and Publications. The result of the application will be communicated in writing by the Director.
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet
Professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Creative Arts Research Institute and Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet looks forward to building on existing connections and collaborations with leading community music researchers at the LCMC to advance our understanding of the cultural, social, and educational benefits of participating in community music across a wide range of contexts from First Nations’ Communities, to prisons, war affected cities, and efforts to address entrenched social inequalities.
Dave Camlin
Lecturer in Music Education, Royal College of Music, London, UK
Dave Camln is delighted to be affiliated to the LCMC – it’s a great initiative which is helping to raise the profile of the impact that music making can have for people and society. Being musical is intricately bound up in being human, and there is no more urgent need than for all humans to find our common humanity in order to be able to collectively address the existential crises facing us and our planet.
Mary Cohen
Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Iowa
Mary Cohen's connection to the Community Music Program at Wilfrid Laurier University has been through her leadership in Community Music and her research. She served as a Community Music Activity Commissioner from 2012-2018 and as an External Examiner for the University of Limerick (Ireland) master’s program in Community Music. She studies and practices music-making and well-being with a focus on peacebuilding, collaborative communities, songwriting and improvisation, and goals of creating more communities of caring through music-making in order to provide space for more socially responsible ways of interacting, particularly in prison contexts.
Andrea Creech
Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs, Schulich School of Music of McGill University
My connection to Wilfrid Laurier University has been through highly valued research partnerships, scholarly collaboration, and friendship. I have published widely on topics concerned with psychological perspectives on lifelong musical development, learning and participation in community contexts. My current research interests focus on pedagogies of creativity and collaboration in music-making across the lifespan, including professional and community contexts. I am co-author of ‘Active Ageing with Music’ and ‘Contexts for Music Learning and Participation’; and Co-Editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Music Psychology in Education and the Community.
Alicia de Banffy-Hall
Professor at University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf, Germany for Music in Social Work/Community Music
I’m very happy to work with the LCMC: building on shared lecture series, our community music winter school and the community music learning youtube channel and collaborate on new projects to come!.
Lee Higgins
Director of the International Centre for Community Music
Lee Higgins is a professor at York St John University, UK and the Director of the International Centre of Community Music. As a presenter, guest speaker, and workshop leader he has worked on four continents in university, school, and NGO settings and was the President of International Society of Music Education from 2016 to 2018. He was the senior editor for the International Journal of Community Music (2007-2021), author of Community Music: In Theory and in Practice(2012, OUP), and Thinking Community Music (2024, OUP), co-author of Engagement in Community Music (2017, Routledge), Free to be Musical (2010, R&L Education) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Community Music (2018) and Ethno Music Gatherings (2024, Intellect).
Gillian Howell
Dean’s Research Fellow at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne
Musician and researcher Dr. Gillian Howell is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne Fitzroy Crossing, a remote community in far north-west Australia. Her award-winning creative practice and applied research investigate the social, cultural, political, and educational contributions of place-based community music making, with a strong focus on how community music practices can support voice, dialogue, peacebuilding, and community healing in places impacted by war, disaster, and settler-colonialism. She has worked as a research consultant and music leader around Australia and in many parts of the world including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, Norway, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
Website: gillianhowell.com.au
Find an expert profile: findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/161258-gillian-howell
LinkedIn: Gillian Howell Music
Sylvanus Kwashie Kuwor
Department of Dance Studies, University of Ghana
Sylvanus Kwashie Kuwor is a master drummer, music, dance and theatre practitioner/scholar who lectures at the University of Ghana, Legon. He has had a decade of experience in Britain as a cultural educator where he used African drum music and dance in inclusion programmes aimed at integrating African refugees into mainstream society. He holds a Diploma in Dance Studies from the University of Ghana, Master of Arts Degree in Creative and Professional Writing from Brunel University in London, a Postgraduate Diploma in Ethnochoreology from Nowegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and a PhD in Dance Anthropology from the University of Roehampton in London.
Dr Kuwor is currently a Visiting Professor of African music and Dance at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo Ontario. His current research focuses on the teaching and practice of West African drum music in Canadian post-secondary music institutions.
Website: www.africanorganicheritage.org
Te Oti Rakena
Director of External Relations with Manutaki Tuitui Rāwaho, Kairuruku Voice/Voice Coordinator, School of Music, Creative Arts and Industries, The University of Auckland/Waipapa Taumata Rau
Te Oti was the first indigenous academic to be appointed as a commissioner on the Community Music Activities (CMA) research commission. His connection to LCMC began when he co-chaired CMA with Lee Willingham and continues in his role as international collaborator on the LCMC project Community music in Canada: Leading music in culturally diverse contexts for social impact.
Website: profiles.auckland.ac.nz/t-rakena
Kathleen Turner
Course Director, MA Community Music, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick
Kathleen Turner is a community musician, arts practice researcher, singer and songwriter based in Limerick, Ireland. She has a specific interest in using creative research methodologies to capture and communicate our lived experiences of music making.