Singing in Balance: A WRoCAH PhD Network on Group Singing, Wellbeing, and Health

 One week on from the Singing in Balance Convention, we are proud to say the event was a success! We brought singing practitioners and academics together to discuss inclusive, accessible singing practice and what that looks like across our different fields. We were so grateful to the fantastic presenters, who covered many topics such as singing for wellbeing, chronic health conditions, lung health, autism, learning difficulties, hypertension, LGBTQ+ communities and more! The talks, panels, and workshops provided a rich tapestry of the amazing work happening in group singing to support others' lives.  It was especially wonderful to have academics and practitioners in the same room, discussing how we can work better together, sharing ideas, working through tensions and best practice, and building each other up. Thank you to our wonderful venue, The Priory Street Centre, York, for your kind hospitality and for making sure everything ran smoothly. Thank you to SEMPRE and the White...

Hello everyone! A network update! Emily, Bruna and Dana were delighted to give a presentation on the Singing in Balance Network at the Sysmus26 Conference at the University of Durham on 22nd July 2026.  We focused on approaches to accessibility in group singing within the different contexts of our PhD projects: - Group singing for people with respiratory conditions. - Choirs for people affected by homelessness. - Examining the psychosocial effects of singing in virtual reality. We also promoted our upcoming Singing in Balance Convention. Registration is currently open (closes 10th August). Register here: https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/singing-in-balance/the-convention It was wonderful to reconnect with fellow academics we had met at previous Sysmus Conferences. A huge thanks to the organisers for a fantastic conference so far. It's brilliant to be in Durham - what a beautiful city with the river, Cathedral and Castle. As a conference group, we walked up to Observator...

Hello! Emily here! Exciting news! The Singing in Balance Network is currently in the process of organising a Convention about accessible and inclusive singing practice. It is shaping up to be a brilliant event, and we would love you to be a part of it. The Singing in Balance Convention (SiBCon) is happening on 9–10 September 2026 at The Priory Street Centre in York. It is a two-day gathering for group singing practitioners and researchers to come together, share their insights into inclusive and accessible group singing practice, and have some great conversations that can help us develop our knowledge and practice in the UK. We are currently inviting contributions from practitioners and researchers, so if any of the following sounds like you, we would love to hear from you: You work with a choir or singing group. You work in a social or healthcare setting. You're based at a university or conservatoire, or are an independent researcher. You have experience leading singing groups wit...

Hello all! Emily here. I am a proud graduate of the Master’s programme in Psychology of Music at the  University of Sheffield . I have recently been invited to write a piece reflecting on my experience of the course and post-course life.  The fact that I remain based in Sheffield and continue to work within the Music Department five years later speaks volumes about the quality of teaching, the depth of expertise, and the genuine care shown by professors, lecturers, and support staff in enabling each student to gain the most from their studies. I can say with confidence that I would not be where I am today without having undertaken this Master’s programme. I completed the Masters Programme in Summer 2022. For my collaborative dissertation (supervised by Prof Renee Timmers), I was partnered with Mir Jansen, the Arts Coordinator at Arts in Health (Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust), an organisation who provide craft activities for hospital staff, patients and vis...

The deadline for SiBCon contributions has been extended until April 15th, 2026.  P lease fill in  this Google Form  to submit. For more information, please visit  Singing in Balance - The Convention  or join our Google Group  Singing in Balance Convention - Google Groups

We are excited to invite you to join us on September 9th-10th for the first Singing in Balance Convention (SiBCon)!  This event aims to bring together group singing practitioners and researchers to change the face of accessible and inclusive singing by sharing research and practice. It is an opportunity to spark conversations, learn from each other and develop connections through our shared interest in accessible singing practice and research.  The two-day convention will consist of workshops, flash talks, themed sessions, demonstrations and discussions with opportunities for networking throughout. The convention will include leaders in the field representing practice and research.  If you would like to get involved, please check out our website  Singing in Balance  and join our Google Group  Singing in Balance Convention - Google Groups . You can also reach us via: Email -  singinginbalance@gmail.com Instagram - @singing_in_balance Facebook - Singing ...

We are looking for people interested in participating in a study on the psychosocial effects of Singing in Virtual Reality (VR)! If you are between 18-60 years old, not currently involved in a musical group, and interested in singing and/or VR, we would love to have you involved in this study. This study involves filling questionnaires on your wellbeing, self esteem, and social connectedness before, during, and after participating in a VR singing experience over the course of 2 weeks. You may or may not be asked to sing. Your data will be anonymised and there will be no recordings taken of your participation. What’s in it for you? By participating in this study, you will receive a £15 Love2Shop gift card and have an opportunity to use a PICO 4 Ultra VR headset. Interested in getting involved? Fill out the form below for more information! SingVR: Interest Form - Google Forms If you have any questions, please get in touch with the lead researcher, Dana Greaves, at dana.greaves@york.ac.u...

 AN UPDATE Hello everyone! Emily here with an update about my PhD journey! The past few months have been very busy! In January I went part time for my PhD as I have also taken up a job working at Sheffield Cathedral as their Music and Liturgy Administrator. This has been a great decision as I now have more time and flexibility to complete all the research projects I want to conduct. In June I submitted my 'Relax, Breathe and Sing' paper to the Music and Science SAGE peer-reviewed journal, co-authored with my supervisor, Prof Renee Timmers, Mir Jansen and Helen Lyle - I'm hoping this will be approved soon! I will update on this blog when that happens. This was a fantastic project involving people with Chronic Health Conditions who have experience of breathlessness. In the meantime, if you want to read up on some work I already have published, you can read this paper I published last year which is a shortened version of my Masters Dissertation:  https://journals.sagepub.com/d...

Pan-European Voice Conference - Spain Good evening everyone! Emily here with another Singing in Balance Blog post. We have all been very busy over the summer working on our projects (hence lack of blog post - sorry!)  I'm very pleased to say that Bruna, Dana and I are officially nearing the end of the first year of our PhDs! I can't believe how the time has flown and how much we have already managed to achieve both individually and as part of a team! Huge shoutout to our supervisors and project partners for supporting us thus far. I can't wait to see what we achieve this year. Two weeks ago, Dana and I attended the 15th Pan-European Voice Conference (PEVOC) .  The conference was attended by voice scientists, clinical staff (speech and language therapists and ENT doctors), voice teachers, researchers, and students from 38 different countries. PEVOC was hosted by Hotel Santemar in Santander, Spain and the programme was VERY extensive, including a wide variety of oral present...

 Hi everyone, it is Bruna here! I am excited to share that last week we presented our first poster together at SysMus24!  The 17th edition of the International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology happened at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Our poster showed the current state of our literature review on the benefits of singing and also presented our collective and individual research aims.  The great thing about SysMus is that it is led by students and for students, which makes everything a bit more relaxed than "big" conferences. However, this more relaxed approach does not mean that the level of quality of presentations is affected. I had the opportunity to meet so many brilliant PhD students from all over the world who are doing a great job in their areas. We also had the chance to hear from three keynote speakers, who introduced us to very interesting topics:  Professor Minna Huotilainen, from the University of Helsinki, took us on a "mental trav...

Hello! Today I would like to share a bit more about a project that I am conducting.  Just to remind you, the big name for my PhD project is "Exploring the balance of socio-musical factors that shape the experiences of members of choirs for people affected by homelessness" (yes, I finally memorized it!). To start understanding this topic I decided to conduct a scoping review.  My objective, first, was to map the literature about any collective music activities and their impacts on people affected by homelessness. I wanted to understand not only which impacts were found, but which methods were used to find them, which approaches were adopted, and where these studies took place.  I conducted a search through a few databases but only found 9 papers, which was not ideal for a scoping review. After talking to my supervisors we agreed that I could expand my search to any arts-related collective activity. This strategy, hopefully, would give me more results and would be an opport...

 I hope everyone is having a great Friday and is excited for the weekend! It's Dana here to provide an update on my current research. From previous posts, or if you have met me in person, you may already know that my research is on the perceived psychological effects from virtual group singing (VGS) participation. My main motivation in conducting research on this topic is because newer technologies can allow for new ways to observe the functions of singing and community building in group singing. I am quite interested in using VR specifically to isolate these functions to gain further insights into these relationships. As I research and better understand the field, I have had these questions pop up repeatedly: What are the functions of singing and community building in VGS? How can we use VR to separate these functions? How important is making VGS as close to reality as possible? And these questions have led me to my research question: To what extent do the social elements of (virt...

Dear reader, Emily here! I am excited to tell you about a one day conference I am organising called MusiConnect .  It is a place for PhD students, Masters students, staff and early career researchers to come together and present research in the field of music and network with each other! It is a one day event happening at the University of Sheffield on Thursday 13th June 2024 - not long to go! Our call for papers is still open for another 4 days if you would like to present either a presentation, a poster or take part in our 3 minute thesis challenge! The link to submit a paper is here:  Call for Papers   The link to register is here:  Registration Please note this is a free event and you can attend online or in person! Can't wait to see you there!

  NEMuR10 Presentation Hello everyone! Emily here! This week we are coming to you with an update from a recent conference we attended as a group.  Last week Bruna, Dana and I presented at the Northern Network for Empirical Music Research Conference at the University of Hull. This was their 10th anniversary meeting!  We were excited to tell everyone about our Singing in Balance PhD Network and showcase our different projects and areas of research, including a shameless plug for this blog! Just in case you are new to this blog - the Network, funded by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities, is a collection of researchers and organisations based across Yorkshire, UK, collectively looking at the effects of choir participation on wellbeing and health.  I am working with an organisation called Arts in Health at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, a charity which provides musical and craft activities for patients and staff with the aim of improving wellbeing ( https://art...

 Hi everyone! Our friends who are hosting ESCOM12 at the University of York on July 3rd-6th, 2024 are looking for welcome volunteers. Anyone who volunteers will be able to attend the conference for free so this is a great opportunity for those interested in attending (plus it looks great on a CV!). More information about the conference and volunteering are below: ESCOM 12 Conference | ESCOM Society Signup Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9OrMwbaq0k_F4j1VjMHL27PUDvNS4P1feAa7VhJsfMOcDPA/viewform Contact  Rebecca Jackson ( rj936@york.ac.uk)  or Caroline Owen ( cao521@york.ac.uk)  for more information!

Hi everyone! It's Bruna here :) I'm glad to present this brand-new page in our blog:  Myth Busters!   Here we are going to discuss some ideas that might be popular but not so true. As the famous Brazilian alien, "ET Bilu " (which was also a myth, by the way) said: seek knowledge!    Now, to today's topic:     Is a PhD a very lonely journey?   Before starting my PhD journey, I heard that it was going to be a very lonely experience. This was the only thing that really worried me before arriving in the UK. I come from a very sociable country, and I was teaching music to hundreds of kids before starting this journey, so the idea of being isolated for more than 3 years made me question if that was the right decision.   The PhD is indeed very different from any other educational or professional experiences that you might have had during your life. You do spend a lot of time reading, reflecting, writing, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting... You are n...