Academic interests
I am interested in the nature of musical absorption and what it does to our consciousness. Therefore I work with some of the best "classic" and Jazz musician in the world doing in depth interviews and also physiological measures. The backbone of my investigations, however, are philosophical or phenomenoloigical. This is because experiences of absorption essentially are experiences of altered senses of self and consciousness. To understand absorption, we therefore need storng theories of what it means to be a self, what it means to be in command of one's actions (the sense of agency) and what it means to let go of control and yet maintain the highest level of mastery over one's playing. I examine these questions through my interviews and quantitative data from the perspective of phenomenology, enactivism, embodied cognition, social ontology, psychology of music and expertise theories. I am also interested in the phenomenology of aesthetics, in psychopathology and in research on dreaming and sleeping which potentially can enlighten the phenomenology of musical absorption.
Courses taught
I will give lectures in the philosophy of music, psychology of music and in the phenomenology of musical performance
Background
I hold a BA in Liberal Arts from Soka University of America (2008), an MA in Philosophy from the University of Liverpool (2009), an MA in Philosophy specialized in phenomenology and philosophy of mind from the University of Copenhagen (2012) and a PhD on "The Phenomenology of Expert Musicianship" from the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen (2015). Since then I've been an external lecturer at the University of Southern Denmark and held post doctoral positions at the Interactive Minds Centre, University of Aarhus and at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen.
Partners
I collaborate with a number of artists as well as cultural and academic instututions. To mention a few: The Danish String Quartet (https://danishquartet.com/), The Center for Subjectivity Research (www.cfs.ku.dk), The National Gallery of Denmark (https://www.smk.dk/en/), The Tokyo Fuji Art Museum (http://www.fujibi.or.jp/en/index/), The Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, Interacting Minds Centre (http://interactingminds.au.dk/), The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt (https://www.mpg.de/6971390/empirische_aesthetik), Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, The Institute for Daisaku Ikeda Studies in Education at DePaul University, Chicago (https://education.depaul.edu/about/centers-and-initiatives/institute-for-daisaku-ikeda-studies/Pages/default.aspx).