Professor Stephanie Pitts (she/her)
BA, MEd, PhD, PGCE, FHEA
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Professor of Music Education
Director of Sheffield Performer and Audience Research Centre
Full contact details
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
1.14
Jessop Building
Leavygreave Road
Sheffield
S3 7RD
- Profile
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My research and teaching is in the areas of music education and the social psychology of music. I am interested in how and why people participate in music, whether as audience members at a jazz club or chamber music festival, amateur performers in an orchestra, or lifelong learners pursuing a musical activity into retirement. I have used mainly qualitative methods of interviews, surveys, diaries and ethnography to collaborate with musical organisations including Making Music, Music in the Round, and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group to answer the underlying question, “If making music is so rewarding for those who do it, why isn’t everyone taking part?” That question leads me into considering approaches to music education, inequalities in access to the arts, and the influences of families, schools and social environments on musical attitudes and experiences.
I am the Director of the Sheffield Performer and Audience Research Centre (SPARC) and with my research collaborators and PhD students have undertaken research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, (AHRC) including a major project across five UK cities on ‘Understanding Audiences for the Contemporary Arts’. I recently held an AHRC Research Network grant investigating classical music networks in UK and European cities, in collaboration with colleagues in Maastricht and Groningen. I am currently co-writing a book from that project, to join others that I have written on music education, audience engagement and musical participation.
I teach on our MA Psychology of Music as well as leading undergraduate modules on music in everyday life, and community music and education. I was Head of Music from 2015-18, and have also held leadership roles in recruitment, student learning and teaching, and postgraduate research. I enjoy international connections with the University of Queensland, where I am an Honorary Professor; Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, where I was an advisor to the Experimental Concert Research project; and the Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music. I was an Associate Director of the Centre for Cultural Value (2019-24) and am a member of the College of Experts for the UK Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
- Qualifications
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PhD in Music (Sheffield)
MEd in Learning and Teaching for Higher Education (Sheffield)
BA (Hons) in Music (York)
PGCE (Secondary Music) (Open University)
- Research interests
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My current research projects relate to my interests in how people access and sustain musical opportunities, particularly in classical music in the UK:
- AHRC Research Network (2023-24): Networked Innovation in Classical Music: Collaborative Ecologies in Creative Cities. This network was co-directed by Prof Peter Peters (Maastricht) and ran in five UK cities and two in Europe, leading to an arts sector handbook and a book currently in preparation for Cambridge University Press.- Reflecting on Lifetime Music Experiences: A collaboration with Katie Overy (Edinburgh) and Judith Okely (Edinburgh Napier) on a large-scale survey of over-60 year olds reflecting on their lifetime musical involvement, its highlights and lulls, and its contribution to their lives. We have written one journal article so far about music and positive ageing, and there is a great deal more in the 327 survey responses to explore.
- Relationships between amateur and professional musical worlds: Several of my PhD students are exploring aspects of professional musical cultures (Tom Spurgin with Manchester Collective), and community music-making groups (Jenn Fuller and Valerie Wong with amateur orchestras; Emily Crossland with community Gamelan groups), and I’m increasingly intrigued by the relationships and tensions between the different layers of classical music-making in the UK, and how these are experienced by participants and audience members.
- Singing for learning, wellbeing and community: Several more PhD students (Emily Lowe and Emily Cooper) are researching aspects of singing and identity, which connect to some SPARC Consultancy work that I undertook with Peterborough Sings!, resulting in two journal articles co-authored with my former PhD student, Dr Elizabeth MacGregor. I’m interested in how their research questions connect with the findings of my research network, where pathways to fulfilling singing opportunities in adulthood were not always clear, and hold potential for greater collaboration between universities and their localities.
- Publications
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Books
- Understanding Audience Engagement in the Contemporary Arts. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Valuing musical participation.
- Chances and Choices:Exploring the Impact of Music Education. Oxford University Press.
- Music and mind in everyday life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Valuing Musical Participation. Routledge.
Edited books
- Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience. Farnham: Ashgate.
- Sound Teaching: A research-informed approach to inspiring confidence, skill, and enjoyment in music performance. Routledge.
Journal articles
- Investigating amateur choirs in the United Kingdom as sites of musical learning and ambition. International Journal of Music Education. View this article in WRRO
- ‘I don’t care who joins my choir’: Investigating attitudes to diversity and inclusivity in lower- and upper-voice choirs in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Community Music, 18(1), 69-91. View this article in WRRO
- Joining alone: factors that influence the musical participation of young adults after leaving school. British Journal of Music Education, 42(2), 140-154. View this article in WRRO
- Understanding the liminality of individual giving to the arts. Arts and the Market, 10(1), 18-33. View this article in WRRO
- Leisure-time music groups and their localities: exploring the commercial, educational and reciprocal relationships of amateur music-making. Music and Letters, 101(1), 120-134. View this article in WRRO
- 'Audience exchange': cultivating peer-to-peer dialogue at unfamiliar arts events. Arts and the Market, 7(1), 65-79. View this article in WRRO
- Dropping in and dropping out: experiences of sustaining and ceasing amateur participation in classical music. British Journal of Music Education, 33(3), 327-346. View this article in WRRO
- Music, Language and Learning: Investigating the Impact of a Music Workshop Project in Four English Early Years Settings. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 17(20), 1-26. View this article in WRRO
Book chapters
- The benefits and challenges of large-scale qualitative research, Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts (pp. 343-354). Routledge
- Understanding Audience Engagement in the Contemporary Arts. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Research group
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My doctoral students have research interests ranging across music education, social psychology and audience studies, including aspects of instrumental learning, lifelong engagement, and young people's experiences of music in school and society. I have supervised nearly twenty doctoral students to successful completion, many of whom have gone on to secure academic posts.
Current students:
Emily Cooper (Co-supervised with Professor Renee Timmers; WRoCAH scholarship): Facilitating the use of voice for people with respiratory conditions through singing and choir participation
Emily Crossland (Co-supervised with Professor Simon Keegan-Phipps; WRoCAH scholarship): Positioning the practitioner: investigating the balance between cultural heritage and cultural democracy in co-creative community gamelan activity in the UK
Jennifer Fuller (Co-supervised with Dr Jennifer MacRitchie; Grantham Scholar): Inclusive concert programming in leisure-time orchestras
Emily Lowe (Co-supervised with Professor Renee Timmers): Reimagining voice pedagogy for nclusion: a Sheffield-based study of gender, identity and access in singing education
Tessa Sawyer (Co-supervised with Dr Will Mason & Professor Mark Taylor; SMI studentship): Troubling youth voice: young people’s experience of creative music education
Tom Spurgin (Co-supervised with Professor Karen Burland, University of Leeds; WRoCAH Collaborative Doctoral Award): Situating radicality in classical music
Valerie Wong Li Qing (Co-supervised with Dr Julie Ballantyne, University of Queensland): The role of music education in sustaining community music participation
Hongjuan Zhu (Co-supervised with Dr Sarah Watts): The impact of microsystem factors on young people’s music learning: A pathway to flourishing
Completed students:
Emma Risley (2022-26, f/t; WRoCAH scholarship): Eight shows a week: investigating the psychological cost of a musical theatre performance career
Deborah Pullicino (2021-25, p/t; co-supervised with Professor Judy Clegg; TESS scholarship): Education ‘in’ and ‘through’ singing to improve and facilitate the communication skills of autistic children
Elizabeth MacGregor (2019-22, f/t; University of Sheffield scholarship): Musical vulnerability in whole class instrumental teaching
Cassie White (2016-22, p/t; co-supervised with Dr Julie Ballantyne, University of Queensland): Career identities of instrumental music educators in Australia
Gina Emerson (2017-20, f/t; co-supervised with Professor Reinhard Flender, University of Hamburg, Ulysses Network scholarship): Audience experience and contemporary classical music: negotiating the experimental and the accessible in a high art subculture
Claudia Braz Nunes (2015-18, f/t): Musical life histories of Portuguese music educators
Mary Hawkes (2011-19, p/t): Applications of sports psychology for enhancing musical performance
Sarah Price (2013-16, f/t; AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award): Risk and reward in classical music concert attendance: investigating the engagement of 'art' and 'entertainment' audiences with a regional symphony orchestra in the uk
Lucy Dearn (2013-16, f/t; AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award): Music, people and place: entering and negotiating listening communities
Josephine Miller (2011-16, p/t): An ethnographic analysis of participation and agency in a Scottish community-based music project
Teresa Rombo (2012-15, f/t; previously supervised by Tony Bennett): Portuguese music for cello since the beginning of the twentieth century
Michael Bonshor (2009-15, p/t): Confidence and the choral singer: the effects of the choir configuration, collaboration and communication
Melissa Dobson (2006-10, f/t; co-supervised with Professor Chris Spencer; university studentship): Audience enjoyment and experience in classical concerts
Sofia Serra (2008-10, f/t; previously supervised by Professor Jane Davidson; Portuguese government sponsorship): Personality and attachment in singing teacher-student interactions
Tim Robinson (2004-10, p/t; co-supervised with Professor Nicola Dibben): How popular musicians teach
Kate Gee (2005-9, f/t; co-supervised with Professor Chris Spencer): Brass musicians’ careers and identities
Susan Monks (2002-8, p/t): Perceptions of the singing voice and vocal identity
Simone Kruger (2002-6, f/t; co-supervised with Professor Jonathan Stock; AHRC funded): Teaching and learning ethnomusicology in higher education
Daphne Bryan (1999-2004, p/t; co-supervised with Professor Eric Clarke): Student-teacher interaction in the piano lesson
- Grants
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• AHRC funded Research Network (£39K), Networked Innovation in Classical Music (2023-24), with lead academics in five UK and two European cities
• AHRC funded project (£340K), Understanding Audiences for the Contemporary Arts (2015-20), building research partnerships and practitioner networks in Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol and London.
• UKRI funded project (£345K), Responding to and modelling the impact of COVID-19 for Sheffield's cultural ecology (2020-21).
- Teaching interests
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I teach qualitative research methods in undergraduate modules on music in everyday life, and on our MA Psychology of Music.
- Teaching activities
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Community, Music and Education
Music Psychology in Everyday Life
Applied Music Psychology
Qualitative Research Methods
- Professional activities and memberships
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- Former Editor (2002-7) of international peer-reviewed journal, British Journal of Music Education, and book review editor for the same journal (2007-11).
- Editorial Board member of Teaching in Higher Education (2005-8), the Hellenic Journal of Music, Education and Culture (2010-16), Journal of Popular Music Education (2017-21), Participations (2014-), Arts and the Market (2022-), and Journal of Live Music Studies (2025-). Regular reviewer for international journals, book proposals, manuscripts, grant applications and external promotion panels.
Professional Activities and Recognition
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Honorary Professor, University of Queensland
- College of Experts, Department of Culture, Media and Sport