Barbara Dignam
Dr
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 Babel (the subject of her PhD) in Irish Musical Analysis (Four Courts Press) and on current debates around women and electroacoustic music/sound art in Ireland in Women and Music in Ireland (Boydell & Brewer). Her research on contemporary DIY culture has featured in TEMPO (Cambridge University Press) and in the Association of Irish Composers’ New Music Journal. Her research on Babel was the subject of a Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland's Amplify podcast. Barbara also contributed several articles to The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (UCDP). In the field of music education and the scholarship of teaching and learning, she co-authored early-career faculty perceptions on teaching praxis (Routledge) and is a co-PI on the Erasmus+ project PRESTO (2021–23) with partners in Hungary, Finland, Scotland and Ireland. Barbara sits on the Council of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and is current Chair of SMI Grants.
Book Chapter
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Barbara Jillian Dignam (2022) 'Surveying the scene: current thoughts on women and electroacoustic music in Ireland' In: Boydell & Brewer. Suffolk : Boydell & Brewer. [Link] | |
| 2021 | Barbara Dignam (2021) 'Everyone’s Music: The Rhetoric of Advocacy in Brian Boydell’s Early Broadcasts for RTÉ Radio' In: Creative Impulses, Cultural Accents: Brian Boydell's Music, Advocacy, Painting and Legacy. Dublin : UCD Press. [Link] | |
| 2014 | Barbara Dignam (2014) 'Multiplicities of musical language and compositional techniques in Roger Doyle’s Babel (1989–99)' In: Irish Musical Studies 11: Irish Musical Analysis. Dublin : Four Courts Press. [Link] | |
| 2008 | Barbara Dignam (2008) 'The Development of a Combinational Model for the Analysis of Acousmatic Music' In: Maynooth Musicology Vol.1. Maynooth, Co. Kildare : National University of Ireland, Maynooth. |
Edited Book
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Barbara Dignam & Barra Boydell (Ed.). (2021) Creative Impulses, Cultural Accents: Brian Boydell's Music, Advocacy, Painting and Legacy. Dublin: UCD Press, [Link] | |
| 2008 | Barbara Dignam, Paul Higgins & Lisa Parker (Ed.). (2008) Maynooth Musicology Vol.1. Maynooth, Co. Kildare: National University of Ireland, Maynooth, |
Peer Reviewed Journal
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Clarke, M.; Barrett, T.; Dignam, B.J.; Galvin, Á.; Hyland, S.; Jennings, D. (2023) 'Early-career STEM faculty members’ perceptions on their teaching praxis'. International Journal for Academic Development, 28 (1). [Link] [DOI] | |
| 2017 | Dignam, BJ (2017) 'CHASING SONIC THREADS: DISENTANGLING THE ELECTROACOUSTIC TAPESTRY OF IRELAND'. Tempo, 71 :5-26. [DOI] |
Other Journal
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Barbara Jillian Dignam (2018) 'Music from the Mothership ('The Curious Works of Roger Doyle' Review)' . [Link] | |
| 2016 | Tighe-Mooney, Sharon, Meliosa Bracken, & Barbara Dignam (2016) 'Peer Assessment as a Teaching and Learning Process: The Observations and Reflections of Three Facilitators on a First-Year Undergraduate Critical Skills Module' 8 (2) . [Link] | |
| 2016 | Barbara Jillian Dignam (2016) 'Unravelling the electrosonic tapestry: six contemporary threads of electroacoustic music in Ireland' . [Link] |
Conference Publication
Conference Contribution
Encyclopedia Entry
Reports
Professional Associations
Honors and Awards
Committees
Enterprise Engagement
Outreach Activities
Media
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
Research Projects
Teaching Interests
Teaching include:
Music Analysis