skip to content

Centre for Music and Science

 
None

All known cultures have music, and all cultures expect their members to be able to be able to make sense of their music by making music or listening to it. In the CMS we explore musicality as a fundamental human capacity. We investigate the full range of musical behaviour from private listening to interacting with others, whether in expert performance or just having fun. Music is not just sound: it is dynamic pattern in embodied minds, movement, and social interactions; it is shaped by biology and the cultures that we inhabit. In the CMS we study music from all these perspectives; we aim to identify its relationships with other domains of human life, particularly speech and language.

How to Apply
We welcome applications from potential MPhil, PhD and Postdoctoral students interested in our research areas, and from visiting scholars and visiting students whose work directly links with ours. Instructions for how to apply are here.

CMS Logo

Latest news

Maddie Jones starting PhD at Bristol University

28 March 2025

We are very pleased to hear that Maddie Jones, who did an undergraduate dissertation project at the CMS analysing the relationship between music listening and mood, has been awarded a full PhD scholarship to study at Bristol University, in the School of Psychological Science. She will be supervised by Professor Claire...

New article: Reverberation time and musical emotion in recorded music listening

28 March 2025

Many congratulations to Hannah Wilkie for her recent article in Music Perception entitled 'Reverberation time and musical emotion in recorded music listening'! This article came from Hannah's MPhil thesis at the CMS in 2023. Hannah is now studying for a PhD in Princeton University. Abstract: The influence of room acoustic...