Susanna Leijonhufvud
Susanna Leijonhufvud is a senior lecturer in music education at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH). Her research addresses musical learning in both historical and contemporary educational contexts, with a focus on the relationship between research and music education practice.
About the researcher
Susanna Leijonhufvud is a senior lecturer in music education at KMH, where she teaches music didactics, research methodology, and scientific methods. She is a trained teacher with many years of experience teaching music and mathematics at the primary and secondary school levels. In addition to classroom teaching, she has worked with choral conducting, arranging, sound engineering, and early childhood music education.
In autumn 2025, she will take on the role of programme director for KMH’s new master’s programme in music education. She also leads the KMH Jubilee Doctoral Fellows project, funded by the Knowledge Foundation (KK-stiftelsen), in which two doctoral students in music education are affiliated with the seminar series Kontrapunkt within the initiative MusikNAVet – aimed at fostering exchange between research and music education practice.
Leijonhufvud earned her PhD in 2018 from the School of Music in Piteå with the dissertation Liquid Streaming – the Spotify Way to Music, having previously completed a licentiate thesis at KMH in 2011 titled Sångupplevelse – en klingande bekräftelse på min existens i världen ("The Singing Experience – A Resonating Affirmation of My Existence in the World"). She serves on KMH’s Research and Education Board and is a deputy member of the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (2024–2027). She has also been a board member of the research network MIRAC, which organises conferences bridging academia and the music industry.
In 2021, she was awarded the Bernadotte Fellowship by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
Research
ULF Project – Practice-based research in music education
Leijonhufvud collaborates with music teachers at Kulturama Upper Secondary School and previously with a music teacher in the municipality of Eskilstuna. The ULF project in Eskilstuna resulted in the publication "A Prima Vista".
ACROSS – Music education via synchronous low-latency technology
A three-year EU-funded project (2024–2027) run via the Stockholm University College of Music Education (SMI), exploring how children and youth in archipelago environments (Åland and the Stockholm archipelago) learn music through synchronous, technology-mediated one-to-one teaching.
Musical learning in the last century
From a sociological perspective, this project examines how professional musicians acquired their skills at a time when music education often took place outside institutional settings.
Music in Antiquity
A Nordic interdisciplinary project where ancient instruments and acoustic soundscapes are explored by musicians and researchers in ethnology, archaeology, composition, sound engineering, and music education (as part of the Danish initiative Ears Wide Open).
Evolving Bildung – Spotify as a case study
A postdoctoral project (2018–2021) at the School of Music in Piteå (Luleå University of Technology), funded by the Wallenberg Foundation. The project resulted in several international publications and the popular science anthology Explorative Bildung in Streaming Media.
The Vejbystrand Group
A research network that emerged from the Swedish national graduate school in music education (2009–2011), working to translate research into music education practice. In 2021, Leijonhufvud co-edited the anthology Rimdrottningar, rockband och folkmusiker – om deltagande och lärande i musiklivet
She has also contributed to the Swedish National Agency for Education’s assessment support in music for compulsory school (2012) and is active as a writer and reviewer in the fields of music education, artistic research, and media studies.