Embodied Research Methods in Music & Sound: PGR/ECR Training Day

Date & Time: Thursday 15 January 2026, 9:30am-4:30pm
Location: Department of Performing Arts, City St. George’s, University of London (Room AG09)

REGISTER HERE - https://www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/2026/january/embodied-research-methods-in-music-and-sound/_nocache

Context:

City St. George’s Performing Arts and the RMA Practice Research Study Group are pleased to announce this Training Day for postgraduate and early-career researchers in Music and Sound, on the theme:

‘How can you share your embodied research? Methods, articulations, modes of dissemination.’

Following our successful Study Day on Embodied Research Methods in Music and Sound (June 2025), this event offers our PGR/ECR community a day of focused training and workshops around Embodied Research Methods, as well as peer-feedback and networking opportunities.

Speakers will include Dr Maria Kapsali (Associate Professor in Physical Performance, University of Leeds), Dr Scott McLaughlin (Associate Professor in Composition, University of Leeds), and Dr Mira Benjamin (Lecturer in Performing Arts, City St. George’s, University of London).

We invite participation from practice researchers in music and sound, for whom embodiment forms a significant methodology in their research process, for example:

·   where the insights of the research process are themselves embodied—e.g., new techniques, relational methods, training paradigms, etc.

·   where embodied work serves as a substantial organising principle in a research process, leading to various modes of insight—eg., new compositional or technological approaches, frameworks of access & inclusivity, etc.

Embodiment is an umbrella term that acknowledges the various ways of knowing that are inherent––lived, experienced, enacted, practiced––in human bodies. Embodied work is positioned at the intersection of creative and critical methodologies, emerging from the ‘practice turn’ (Schatzki et al., 2001), building on foundational work in Performance Studies (Rink, 2004; Cook, 2013), and aligning with post-textual (Small, 1998) and practice research (Bulley & Şahin, 2021) discourses in music and sound. ‘Embodied research’ (Spatz: 2017) thus proposes a wide range of activities––from performance and sonic arts to listening and 'cyborg’ musicking (Dyer & Kanga, 2023)—as spaces of being-doing-knowing (Nelson, 2022).

Embodied practice and embodied research have become thematic hot-spots in recent musical discourse, affording researchers the means to recognise and articulate technical, sensory, affective, perceptual and tacit knowledge forms as investigative territories. We recognise Embodied Research as a relatively new methodology within the academic discipline of music, and note that musicians still often articulate their insights by drawing substantially on conceptual frameworks external to music—e.g. from theatre, dance and physical performance, social epistemology, and philosophy of science. We hope this training event may clarify and highlight some of the novel embodied methods at work in musical practices, and begin to establish the keystones that are distinct to embodied research in music.

Call for Participation

This event offers open registration to our PGR/ECR community. A registration link will be available shortly.

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Structure

The timing of the day will be:

9.30am coffee

10:00 Opening remarks from convenors, and ‘Sandpit’ (peer-to-peer feedback) with participants

11:30 Presentation 1 (Mira Benjamin/Scott McLaughlin)

13:00 Lunch break

14:00 Presentation 2 (Maria Kapsali)

15:30 World Cafe—discussion forum & brainstorming

16:30 Closing remarks and pub

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Contact

Any questions - please contact the main event organiser at Mira.Benjamin@citystgeorges.ac.uk.