Dr Elizabeth H. MacGregor

Profile

I am currently a Teaching Fellow in Music Education and Performance at the School of Music, University of Leeds. Since completing my doctoral research in music education at the University of Sheffield in 2022, I have held research posts with the Sheffield Performer and Audience Research Centre and the Birmingham Music Education Research Group, and undertaken postdoctoral research as the Joanna Randall-MacIver Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford. I have worked on a wide variety of research projects relating to arts education, including the national Arts Council England initiative, Creativity Collaboratives; comparative cross-nation policy analysis with the Group for Research in Music Education at Cardiff Metropolitan University; and pedagogical knowledge exchange workshops with pre-service music teachers across England and Wales.

In addition to my ongoing research in the field of music education, I am responsible for teaching modules on music education and performance at the University of Leeds and act as assistant editor for the international, peer-reviewed journal, Research Studies in Music Education. I am also a network lead for the British Educational Research Association Neurodivergent Researchers Network, and between 2023 and 2025 was the recipient of the British Educational Research Association Career Development Fellowship.

Research interests

My current research addresses experiences of ‘musical vulnerability’ – positive and negative encounters resulting from our inherent and situational openness to music – within music education settings. My first monograph, Musical Vulnerability: Receptivity, Susceptibility, and Care in the Music Classroom (2025), conceptualises and characterises musical vulnerability within secondary school contexts, and my most recent postdoctoral research has investigated the development of responsive ‘pedagogies of vulnerability’ through collaborations with classroom music teachers.

Alongside my research into pedagogies of vulnerability and ethics of care, I have published widely on music education policies such as the National Curriculum, National Plan for Music Education, and General Certificate of Secondary Education; participatory performance in classroom settings; community and recreational music-making; and issues of equality and accessibility around gender and disability. My work has been published in volumes including Debates in Music Teaching (2nd edn, 2026), Learning to Teach Music in the Secondary School (4th edn, 2026), A Practical Guide to Teaching Music in the Secondary School (2nd edn, 2022), and Creative and Critical Projects in Classroom Music (2021). Alongside my teaching responsibilities at the University of Leeds, I am now working on forthcoming publications and collaborations around the subjects of hidden curriculum and core knowledge in the music classroom, multimodal creativities and special educational needs, and the lived experiences of neurodivergent academics.

You can listen to me discussing my recent research on the podcasts Emma and Tom Talk Teaching and The Music Education Podcast, or read about my book on the Music Mark Research Shorts Blog.

Qualifications

• PhD
• MA(Cantab)
• MPhil(Cantab)

Professional memberships

• International Society for Music Education (ISME)
• Society for Education, Music, and Psychology Research (SEMPRE)
• British Educational Research Association (BERA)