Dr
Barbara
Dignam
Academic biography
Dr Barbara Dignam (she/her) is Assistant Professor in Music in the School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music. She holds a PhD in musicology from Maynooth University, a professional qualification in teaching and learning (PGDHE) and was awarded a DCU President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for her Distinctive Approaches to Assessment in 2021. Her research explores 20th and 21st century musics that intersect sound, language, and digital technologies in her investigation of, among other things, human interactions with cultural output and the relationships and processes underpinning them. Her engagement with new music and its practitioners facilitates the capture of contemporary experiences of new concepts, approaches and technologies in use. This includes examining how digital technologies can influence, support and impact learning and teaching in music.
Barbara is principal editor of and contributor to Creative Impulses, Cultural Accents: Brian Boydell’s Music, Advocacy, Painting and Legacy (UCD Press). She has written extensively on electroacoustic music in Ireland for the Irish Musical Studies series, on Roger Doyle's masterwork
Research interests
My research interests include:
Contemporary Art Musics: 20th & 21st century musics (history, musicology, analysis incl. methodologies, aesthetics, performance and presentation); Electroacoustic music studies, alternative musicologies, sonic arts, and transitory art; Women in/and contemporary music; DIY culture; Intertextuality, intermediality, inter–art and interdisciplinarity in contemporary musics; Cultural mediation, cultural hybridity and music in the global digital world; Contemporary music in Ireland; Relationships between the composer, musicologist, performer/practitioner and audience (incl. ethnographic research and audience studies)
Digital Technologies & Creative Arts: Visualisation of Sound using Digital Technologies; Technological mediation in music (incl. AI); Sound, space, narrative and visualisation;
Education & Music: Learning & Teaching Music in HE; Internationalising the music curriculum; Universal Design for Learning and music programme development; Music advocacy and education in the wider societal context (incl. music and technology); Arts culture and policy