Dr Ruth Herbert

About

I’m a music psychologist and pianist, Senior Lecturer in Music at the Dept of Music and Audio Technology, School of Arts, University of Kent. My research interests embrace music and consciousness (including ASC and Trance), sonic studies, health and wellbeing, music education, evolutionary psychology, ethology and performance psychology. Publications include a co-edited volume on music and consciousness (OUP, 2019) and a monograph on everyday music listening (Routledge 2016[2011).

My work is informed by ecological approaches to perception and 4E cognition. It focuses on the subjective experience (phenomenology) of music in daily life, and the transformations of consciousness that may occur in conjunction with listening to and making music. Research studies include the comparison of everyday absorbed and dissociative experiences, with and without music in naturalistic settings; musical daydreaming; age-related differences in 10–18-year-olds experiences with and of music. I have a particular interest in the ontology of autism, and multisensory experience.

Dr Ruth Herbert’s profile at the School of Arts