Professor of Creative and Performing Arts (Music)
Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne.
Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions
As Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, Jane leads the Centre’s Performance Program as well as Arts Industry Partnerships, Education and Outreach and Media and Communications.
As a complex multi-site organization, the Centre deals with five of the GO8 Universities, plus eight overseas partnering universities and increasing numbers of strategic partnerships across a range of arts, not-for-profit and NGO organizations. The Centre is often showcased as an example of tangible economic and social impact, and in 2017 won the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Australia Prize for Distinctive Work
Her own understanding of and commitment to Engagement and Partnerships is realized in research led projects in history of emotions, performance and applied psychology of music. Through cooperative consultation she has been leading the development Faculty of Fine Arts and Music’s engagement strategy.
She has five core areas of study: artistic development, arts and health (particularly ageing), performance practices, emotion and expression in performance, and vocal studies. She has published extensively and has been the successful recipient of research grants internationally, and is a frequent reviewer for academic funding bodies and publishers.
Jane Davidson began her academic career in 1991, initially as a postdoctoral research fellow at Keele University, Staffordshire, then as a lecturer in music at City University, London. Between 1995 and 2006 she worked through the ranks from lecturer to full professor at University of Sheffield. Also, while in the UK, she taught on a sessional basis in the departments of vocal and academic studies at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She moved to Australia as the inaugural Callaway/Tunley Chair of Music at The University of Western Australia and worked there 2006 to 2013. She has been Professor of Creative and Performing Arts at The University of Melbourne since 2014.
She was Editor of Psychology of Music (1997-2001); Vice-President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (2003-2006); and President of the Musicological Society of Australia (2010 and 2011). She also completed service as a member of the Research Evaluation Committee for Excellence in Research in Australia (ERA) for both the trial evaluation in 2009 and main assessment in 2012.
As a practitioner, Jane has worked as an opera singer and music theatre director. She has coordinated voice at the Universities of Sheffield and Western Australia, offering a range of repertoire classes and staged productions. She continues this work at Melbourne, coordinating the MMus in Opera Performance.
Jane also teaches into the MMus in Music Psychology and Performance Science and currently supervises many postgraduate singers, alongside a range of other performers, teachers, and music psychology and musicology scholars.
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Projects
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Project Types
7
Research Grant
4
Research Contracts
1
Internal Research Grant
Scholarly Works
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Credentials
Positions
Head, Faculty Research Centre
Fine Arts And Music
Education
MA in Contemporary Arts (Dance Choreography)
University of Leeds
Graduate Certificate in Counselling
Keele University
PhD in Music Psychology
City University
Master of Arts in Music Performance Studies (Distinction)
City University
Postgraduate Certificate of Education
Goldsmiths, The University of London
Creative Arts (Music), 1st Class
Newcastle Polytechnic