Neta Spiro is Reader in Performance Science at the Royal College of Music (RCM) and an honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London. Neta’s background is in music (BMus, Oxford University), cognitive science (MSc, Edinburgh University), and music psychology (PhD, Amsterdam University). She was previously Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, and at the New School for Social Research, New York. She previously taught at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, and was Head of Research at Nordoff Robbins, London.
Two questions underlie her research: What is the potential role of music in peoples’ health and wellbeing, and what is communicated when we make music together? Her research on these questions has been from four perspectives: people’s reported experiences of music making, effects of music engagement on people’s judgements, health and wellbeing outcomes of music engagement, and analysis of interaction in music.
Neta’s current research includes exploring experiences of musical care during the beginning of life and their implications for policy recommendations for upscaling musical care during this life stage in the UK, and exploring the connection between overlapping cognition and feelings of social connection in an online songwriting intervention as part of the Songs from Home project.
Neta is interested in bringing together public engagement activities with fundamental research in live science contexts. She has most recently explored this as part of the Singing Together project, which explores how people with a variety of musical backgrounds experience their duet singing.
Neta is also interested in interdisciplinary, international, and intercultural collaboration, and she co-leads the Music Care International Network which brings researchers and practitioners with different perspectives together.
Neta is on the editorial board of the journals BMC Public Health, Journal of Music Therapy, Music and Science, and Psychology of Music, and a member of the Music Therapy Charity Research Committee.
Neta’s undergraduate and postgraduate teaching includes arts and music in health modules.