MERYC in Reykjavík, Iceland, 2. - 5. June 2027
Keynote speakers MERYC 2027
Musical beginnings to social engagement, A multimodal perspective
Dr. Trinh Nguyen is a developmental psychologist and Research Associate at the University of Heidelberg. She earned her PhD at the University of Vienna and was previously a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Italian Institute of Technology in Rome. Her research explores how babies and young children get "in sync" with their caregivers, and how shared rhythms such as singing, movement, touch, and taking turns support this connection. To study these moments, she combines detailed video analysis and motion tracking with measures of brain activity and heart rhythm, recorded in parent and child at the same time.
Dr. Margaret S. Barrett
Professor Margaret S. Barrett is a leading figure in Australian and international music education. She is currently professor and Head of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University. Among her many achievements Professor Barrett was awarded a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in 2018 to undertake preliminary investigations of children’s singing and song-making in the archives of the Smithsonian Institute, and the Library of Congress (Washington DC) and was elected Beaufort Visiting Research Fellow at St John’s College University of Cambridge in 2019. She has held a research residency funded by the Foundation de Maison des Sciences de l’Homme at IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics /Musique) investigating creative pedagogy and transmission practices (2019). She was awarded the Fellowship of the Australian Society for Music Education in 2011. Professor Barrett has held nine ARC grants, seven as lead Chief Investigator, in addition to numerous other funded research projects. She is currently Founding Director of the Pedagogies of Creativity, Collaboration, Expertise and Enterprise (PoCCEE) research focus at Monash.
Spaces of Wonder: Possibilities Through Creative Participation
Dr. Laura Huhtinen-Hildén works as a principal lecturer and researcher at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland. She is also an associate professor (Docent) at the University of Jyväskylä in the field of music education and cultural wellbeing. She has developed Finland’s Cultural Wellbeing, Research and Education Centre (CuWeRE) and established the Master’s programme Creativity and Arts in Social and Health Fields. She has contributed to international networks through board roles in MERYC and the International Society for Music Education’s ECME Commission. Currently she is an affiliated researcher in Jameel Arts & Health Lab founded by WHO Regional Office for Europe and New York University Steinhardt School..
