Developing digital tools to support and empower musicians (Dr Akiho Suzuki, Royal Northern College of Music)

Being a performing musician is rewarding but can also be challenging. Many musicians face various obstacles in their journeys including low confidence, performance anxiety, and performance-related pain, to name a few. My primary goal as a researcher is to support musicians through such challenges, and I believe that technology is a tool that we can harness to make such support widely available and accessible. In this talk, I present my current projects that aim to develop digital tools to support and empower musicians. I will discuss a) the development of an online intervention on effective practice; b) the use of social media to equip musicians with evidence-based knowledge about health; and c) the development of a mobile app intervention for musicians’ pain. I will discuss benefits and drawbacks of such approaches, findings from studies, lessons learnt, and future directions.

Biography

Akiho is a music psychology researcher with a passion for supporting musicians’ health and wellbeing. She initially trained as a classical pianist and completed a Bachelor of Music (Performance) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music before studying an MA in Psychology of Music at the University of Sheffield and a PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music. Her AHRC -funded PhD project involved developing an online intervention on effective practice and performance preparation. Akiho is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine at the Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media, where she is working on a project that aims to develop and trial a mobile app intervention for musicians’ performance-related pain. Akiho is also the co-leader of the AHRC -funded project Flourish, which aims to communicate research knowledge from performance science to musicians in accessible and engaging ways.