Hello!

In my work, I primarily aim to understand the psychological and cultural foundations of music. 

I am fascinated by the relationship between internal representations underlying individual-level cognition (operating as e.g. melodic/harmonic syntax), and population-level features such as the different "formulas" that emerge in different traditions (e.g. cadences in Western music), as perhaps attractors each specialising to express a limited universal set of emotions.

Ultimately, I am interested in the evolutionary processes that operate on culture, and how these shape the way in which transmitted forms of communication and meaning-making (language and music prime illustrations thereof) differentiate and give rise to the cross-cultural diversity we observe across the world.

I approach such interdisciplinary questions with complementary methodologies, for instance:

• computational modeling, simulation and corpus analyses, to interface the world of music theory and digital humanities;

• neuroimaging and cognitive psychology, to observe behavioural and (neuro)physiological responses to music in light of known mechanisms;

• evolutionary and cultural anthropology, to interpret these mechanisms against insights into the origins of music and language, thereby building comprehensive testable theories; 

• data science, machine learning, and signal processing, to separate and interpret sources and patterns of variability.

My work has been published in journals such as Science, Cortex, Neuropsychologia, Scientific Reports, and Behavioural and Brain Sciences; as well as featured in media outlets such as the BBC and the ÖRF.