Research
Music is a major field of knowledge and research area, relevant to a number of social areas such as health, technology, economics, learning and cultural heritage. KMH aims to work within the subject area of music, in order to be able to contribute with our specific skills to other fields of knowledge where music participates in social development and for a good life.
From Practitioners to Researchers
To create, perform and learn music, you need to understand how it works. You need to understand the traditions and specificities of different musical forms, their language and function, and not least how they are technically constructed.
KMH's many toolboxes for exploring and understanding music are constantly evolving: ranging from music theory and studies of the music engineering to subjects such as music history, music anthropology and music education.
At a more specialized level, teachers also engage in artistic and scientific research in music.
Artistic Research in Music
The artistic research in music contributes to in-depth insights and renewal in musical creation and widening of music as a social phenomenon and expression. Henrik Frisk, lecturer in music and responsible for the research collaboration with KTH
Artistic research in music gives the musician – in a broad sense including all professional music practice – the ability to acquire knowledge that can be applied both in an artistic field and in a broader context, based on its special skills.
An artistic research work can be a part of both methodology and results and include an imaginary process, in which intuition, craftsmanship, collaboration and contextualization are included and collaborate.
Musical research can affect, for example, interpretation and analysis of musical works, behavioural practices and historical contexts. Artistic research in music has, in addition to the purely artistic perspectives, been used to investigate issues such as health, gender equality/gender, technology development, psychology, human-machine interaction and creative collaborations.
The Emergence of Artistic Research
That artistic expressions and artistic practice have a knowledge dimension that is comparable to other areas of knowledge is now an established thought in Sweden. Since the beginning of the 21st century there has been artistic research in most artistic disciplines, and this research is often interdisciplinary by nature.
Music is one of the largest, and also oldest, subjects in the field, and the methodological and theoretical dissemination is now relatively large.
Research education with a focus on artistic research has been conducted since the 1990s and in 2010, Sweden received a doctorate in artistic research.
Scientific Research in Music
Research in music has also generated the interdisciplinary research subject music education, which studies all forms of musical learning, including frameworks, prerequisites, traditions and conditions governing situations where music forms the content of learning processes.
The starting point for problem solving is the context in which music is included in upbringing, education or teaching.
Another field in the music education research at KMH is music therapy.
Music Therapy
Music and Health/Music Therapy as a research area takes its starting point in music experience, musical creation and musical interaction to explore communicative, emotional, social and cognitive development. Music therapeutic research is based on evidence-based interdisciplinary methodology, whose results are sought and used in health promotion and treatment interventions in health care, rehabilitation, social work, habilitation and special education.
The research extension in education based on music education and music therapy at KMH is very strong and gives depth to the next generation of musicians and music teachers.
KMH's Research Environment
Music is a major research area, which has a bearing on a number of other topics. KMH acts partly as an individual specialized institution, partly in collaboration with other institutions and organizations, representing the major subject area of music.
As KMH does not yet have the entitlement to award a qualification at the postgraduate level, we are working with the CSC School at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University, and the Faculty of Arts at Lund University, with whom we cooperate in postgraduate studies.
In addition, we have national and international externally funded research projects, local research projects, a higher seminar for research in music and faculty meetings for supervisors. In addition, KMH organises research development activities such as workshops on written assignments for teachers/supervisors and workshops for application writing.