Academic biography

Dr Barbara Dignam (she/her) is Assistant Professor in Music and Teaching & Learning Convenor in the School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music. She is also Chair of Second Arts on the BA Joint Honours Programme. 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, was Chair of SMI Grants (2021-2024), and is current Honorary Membership Secretary.