Our people
Meet the team driving Sempre’s mission to advance research in music education, psychology and its practical application.
Chair & trustees
Our trustees are instrumental in guiding Sempre’s vision and fostering its contributions to the fields of music and psychology research.
Graham Welch
Chair
Graham F Welch studied education 3-13y, as well as music, at the Froebel Educational Institute and University of London prior to completing his MA and PhD at the same institutions. He was a full-time generalist Primary teacher in London for 14 years, and spent over two decades as a part-time professional singer. He has held the UCL Institute of Education (formerly University of London) Established Chair of Music Education since 2001, is Chair of the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (Sempre), and is a Past President of the International Society for Music Education (ISME). Publications number over 450.
Adam Ockelford
Secretary
Adam Ockelford ARAM PhD FTCL is a leading international expert on music and neurodiversity. Professor of Music at the University of Roehampton, he has published 20 books, hundreds of papers, and lectures globally on music and the mind, focusing on exceptional abilities and needs. He founded The Amber Trust, supporting blind and partially sighted children, and Sounds of Intent, promoting inclusive music-making worldwide, and he is Secretary of Sempre. Adam has a TED talk, “In the Key of Genius,” with savant pianist Derek Paravicini, with whom he’s worked for 40 years. More at www.ambertrust.org, www.soundsofintent.org, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Ockelford.
Ian Cross
Initially a classical guitarist, Ian Cross is Emeritus Professor of Music and Science at the University of Cambridge, having taught in the Faculty of Music from 1986 to 2021 and founded the Centre for Music & Science there in 2002. He is Editor-in-Chief of Sempre’s journal Music & Science, and, with Adam Ockelford and Graham Welch, editor of the Sempre/Routledge series Sempre Studies in the Psychology of Music. He is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Helen Prior
Joint Conference Secretary
Helen Prior has been a Conference Secretary of Sempre since 2012, and a Sempre Trustee since 2025. She is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Hull, and has research interests in music psychology, music education, and music and the environment. She has co-edited volumes on Music and Familiarity and Music and Shape, and has published work within numerous academic publications, including Psychology of Music and Music and Science.
Karen Burland
Karen Burland is Professor of Applied Music Psychology at the University of Leeds and is the university academic lead for work relating to employability and student futures. Karen researches musical identities and their role in musical participation in a variety of contexts. She is currently involved in projects investigating the ways in which students engage with, and perceive, employability activities during university and beyond. Karen is a trustee of the exciting Harmony Works project in Sheffield and is the Chair of the South Yorkshire Music Hub. Karen was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2022 in recognition of her work as a music psychology educator and her leadership in student education.
Editors
Discover the editors behind Sempre’s journals, committed to advancing research in music psychology and education.
Nikki Moran
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Psychology of Music
Nikki Moran is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Edinburgh. She is a widely-published musicologist with an interdisciplinary specialism in music psychology and ethnography, exploring the interpersonal processes that enable people to participate in expressive arts.
Michelle Phillips
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Psychology of Music
Michelle Phillips is Senior Lecturer in Music Psychology at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she is Head of Enterprise. Her research has a wide span, ranging from audience response to live and recorded music through music and time to the roles of music in alleviating symptoms of Parkinson’s.
Katerina Drakoulaki
Assistant Editor, Psychology of Music
Katerina Drakoulaki is a postdoctoral fellow at the Cognition Attention Perception Speech Lab at Mount Holyoke College in the USA, investigating implicit prosody and meter perception in children’s reading comprehension skills. She has strong interests in interdisciplinary research and has a clinical practice in paediatric speech and language therapy.
Karen Wise
Assistant Editor, Psychology of Music
Karen Wise is Research Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She is a psychologist, teacher and classical mezzo soprano and has published on the psychology of singing (focusing on singing difficulties in untrained adults) as well as on the psychology of performance in professional and student musicians.
Julie Ballantyne
Co-Editor, Research Studies in Music Education
Julie Ballantyne is Associate Professor in the School of Music at the University of Queensland. Her work is concerned with music teacher identities, social justice, music teacher education, and the social and psychological impacts of musical engagement, and she has published widely in the field of music education.
Alexis Kallio
Co-Editor, Research Studies in Music Education
Alexis Kallio is Deputy Director (Research) of the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. Her research explores music as a unique form of cultural production that holds creative potentials for agency, equity, and justice.
Elizabeth MacGregor
Assistant Editor, Research Studies in Music Education
Elizabeth MacGregor is the Joanna Randall-MacIver Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford, where she is investigating the notion of ‘musical vulnerability’— the ways in which we are open to being positively and negatively affected by engagement with music.
Ian Cross
Editor-in-Chief, Music & Science
Ian Cross is Emeritus Professor of Music and Science, a Director of Research at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. Over the last forty years his extensive publications have made significant contributions to many areas of music and science. He is also a guitarist.
Scott Bannister
Assistant Editor, Music and Science
Scott Bannister is a Research Associate at the Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness (ManCAD), at University of Manchester. His research is concerned with music and strong emotional experiences, hearing loss, psychophysiology, empathy and social cognition. His current role involves understanding the listening intentions of hearing aid users in daily life.
Administrator and Membership Secretary
Josephine Borradaile
Josephine is Administrator and Membership Secretary for Sempre and supports the Chair, Trustees and Treasurer in a variety of ways including preparing the accounts for Sempre’s annual return for the Charity Commission.
Electronic Media Officer
Xi Zhang
Xi is the Electronic Media Officer for Sempre, overseeing website management, social media and digital communication, as well as email and newsletter coordination.
Committee
Chair: Graham Welch
Secretary: Adam Ockelford
Treasurer: Karen Burland-Clark
Conference Secretaries: Helen Prior, Javier Rivas, Eleonora Savvidou
Administrator and Membership Secretary: Josephine Borradaile
Electronic Media Officer: Xi Zhang
Early Career Researcher: Melissa Kirby, Kate Blackstone
Student Representatives: Dan Baczkowski, Lisa Thorpe
Lay Members: Margaret Barrett, Arielle Bonneville-Roussy, Monica Esslin-Peard, Jane Ginsborg, Raymond MacDonald, Kathryn Marsh, Ioulia Papageorgi, Aaron Williamon, Karen Wise
Editors of the Sempre journals: Nikki Moran, Michelle Phillips, Katerina Drakoulaki, Karen Wise, Julie Ballantyne, Alexis Kallio, Elizabeth MacGregor, Ian Cross, Scott Bannister
Contact us
If you have questions or would like more information about our Sempre membership, awards or publications, please reach out to our team using the contact details below.
Publications & awards
For all enquiries about publications or awards, contact:
Graham Welch
