The UBC School of Music is happy to announce that Dr. Leigh VanHandel will join the faculty as Associate Professor of Music Theory, beginning in the 2020-21 school year.
Photo: Harley Seeley
“We are very excited to welcome a scholar and pedagogue of Leigh VanHandel’s calibre to the School of Music. Her research interests both complement and diversify the strengths of our Music Theory Division,” said Prof. T. Patrick Carrabré, Director of the School of Music.
Dr. VanHandel joins UBC from the Michigan State University, where she has taught since 2005. A leading expert on teaching music theory, she is the editor of The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy (2020) and the author of Oxford University Press’s Music Theory Skill Builder, an online music fundamentals drill and practice program. In addition to pedagogy, her research areas include music cognition, the relationship between music and language, computer-assisted research, and how these things all relate to one another.
“On behalf of the Music Theory Division, I am delighted to welcome Dr. VanHandel as a new colleague. She joins the School at an important juncture, as we strive to tune our teaching and research to the future of music in our diverse society. We look forward to benefitting from her wealth of experience and leadership in innovative teaching methods and cross-disciplinary collaboration, informed by her manifold research activities,” added Prof. John Roeder, Chair of the Music Theory Division.
Dr. VanHandel’s scholarship seeks to understand how music works and how humans process music, which in turn informs her teaching. Her current research focuses on how music theory pedagogy can profit from recent research into the cognition processes involved in teaching and learning, and how best practices in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) pedagogy can be adapted to music theory instruction. Read her full bio here.
“I’m thrilled to join the UBC School of Music as an Associate Professor of Music Theory. UBC has a long tradition of excellence and innovation, and I’m excited to work with and collaborate with the faculty and students that make it such an exciting and vibrant place to be,” Dr. VanHandel said.
Dr. VanHandel will teach the analysis of tonal music and a seminar in music theory pedagogy beginning in Term One of the Winter Session.
Welcome to UBC, Leigh!
