Dr Mary Stakelum

BEd BMus MA PhD PGCert (Kodaly) SFHEA

Dr Mary Stakelum SFHEA is Area Leader for Music Education and Programme Leader on the MEd and MMusEd.   

Previous roles have included Director of Research and Head of Postgraduate Programmes (Bath Spa University), Associate Director of Graduate School, Course leader for MA Instrumental Teaching, BA Ed Music specialism and PGCE Secondary music (University of Reading), and Lecturer in Music and Music Education (University of Limerick). In addition to her teaching and leadership roles, she has extensive experience internationally in research consultancy, programme review and doctoral examination.  

Dr Stakelum is a longstanding advocate for music education. She is a member of ISME and served two terms as elected board member of the European Association for Music in Schools (www.eas-music.org), leading its Doctoral Student Forum from 2011 to 2018. More recently she has joined the Steering Advisory Board of pan-European collaborative research and development network Teacher Education Academy for Music (teacher-academy-music.eu). She is conference director of the biennial International Conference on Research in Music Education (https://rime-conference.org). 

Between 2018 and 2025 she was editor in chief of the international peer reviewed journal Music Education Research. She has also served as trustee of the Society for Education and Music Psychology Research (www.sempre.org.uk) and co-chair of the advisory board for Magic Acorns (www.magicacorns.co.uk).  

Research interests: Partnership pedagogy; inclusive practices; interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning: exploring sound; ethnography; children’s musical worlds; music in higher education.  

To date she has a total of four books and edited volumes published on these topics, and has written numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and encyclopaedia entries.  

Current projects: Rewilding music education (monograph in preparation) and New Pathways in Music Education Research - Beyond Practice (Palgrave Macmillan), with co-editor Dr Jessica Pitt.  

Selected publications

Stakelum M (2024), Music literacy and the instrumental teacher, Music Education Research, 26(1), 47-57 [DOI].

Stakelum M (2022), Understanding Music Education: Exploring Children’s Musical Worlds, Sage [ISBN 9781473914346].

Stakelum M (2019), James Cooksey Culwick: the rudiments of music (1882), in K Houston, M McHale, & M Murphy (eds.), Documents of Irish Music History in the Long Nineteenth Century, Irish Musical Studies Vol. 12 (pp. 75-84), Four Courts Press [ISBN 9781846827242].

Stakelum M (2017), The business of music: creativity and innovation in the classroom, in R Girdzijauskiene & M Stakelum (eds.), European Perspectives on Music Education Vol. 7: Creativity and Innovation (pp. 105-120), Helbling [ISBN 9783990357514].

Stakelum M (2016), Harnessing the everyday use of technology to create inclusive musical interactions in the classroom, in N Economidou & M Stakelum (eds.), European Perspectives on Music Education Vol. 4: Every Learner Counts: Democracy and Inclusion in Music Education (pp. 97-110), Helbling [ISBN 9783990353813].

Stakelum M (2014), Boundaries and bridges: the influence of James Cooksey Culwick on the development of the teaching and learning of music in 19th-century Ireland, International Journal of Music Education, 32 (4), 409-421 [DOI].

Stakelum M & Baker D (2013), The MaPS project: mapping teachers’ conceptions of musical development, In M Stakelum (ed.), Developing the Musician: Contemporary Perspectives on Teaching and Learning, SEMPRE Studies in the Psychology of Music (pp. 135-154), Ashgate [ISBN 9781409450177].

Stakelum M (2011), An analysis of verbal responses to music in a group of adult non-specialists, Music Education Research, 13(2), 173-97 [DOI].

Faculties / departments: Research, Academic staff

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