Staff profile
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Job title: Lecturer
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Dept: Music and Performing Arts
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Tel: 01227 782380
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Campus: Canterbury
Vanessa completed her doctoral study at the University of East Anglia in 2008 with her thesis, 'Music's Experiment with Information Theory,' a historic approach to the development of modern theory and analysis in relation to the burgeoning communication sciences from the 1950s onwards.
Her subsequent research has concentrated on the concept of information (in both philosophical and mathematical senses), the representation of analytical knowledge and its usefulness for performers, and analytical approaches to the connection between structure and experience of music.
The ongoing collaborative research project, 'Scalable Analytical Approaches and Performative Affordance' is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on concepts from performance studies, psychology, and computational analysis. One significant outcome of this project was a symposium at the International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition in Seattle in 2010.
Vanessa's teaching experience is broad and varied, and she specialises in the interaction between musical and scientific thought. She also has extensive experience teaching analysis, musicology, musicianship and aural skills, ethnomusicology and popular music topics.
During her doctoral study, Vanessa came into contact with the pedagogical, theoretical and compositional work of the American composer, David Kraehenbuehl (1923-1997). She is on the Board of Directors of the David Kraehenbuehl Society - a society for the promotion of his musical and theoretical legacy - as their European representative.
Vanessa is instrumental in arranging the termly departmental study days, details of which can be found here|.