Dr Renee Timmers
Department of Music
The University of Sheffield
Jessop Building
34 Leavygreave Road
Sheffield
S3 7RD
Tel: +44 (0) 114 222 0477
Fax: +44 (0) 114 222 0469
email : r.timmers@sheffield.ac.uk
Biography
Renee Timmers is Lecturer in Psychology of Music and teaches courses on music perception, psychological approaches to performance, music cognition, empirical musicology, and quantitative research techniques. She directs the onsite and distance learning MAs in Psychology of Music, and directs with Nicola Dibben the research centre Music Mind Machine in Sheffield. She was educated in the Netherlands in musicology (MA from the University of Amsterdam) and psychology (PhD from the Radboud University Nijmegen) and as a performer. Before joining the Department of Music in Sheffield in 2009, she was a research fellow at a number of institutes, including the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music at King's College London, the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Vienna and the Donders´ Insitute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen. She was part-time lecturer at the department of Sonology of the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague from 2000-2008 and has lectured at the Radboud University Nijmegen and the University of Amsterdam on music cognition, auditory perception, and the philosophy of science.
Her research has focussed on expressive performance of music, emotion and meaning in music, and influences of emotion on music perception and cognition. Most of her work has a strong interdisciplinary focus, combining theory and computer modelling with empirical testing and exploration. She has published widely in international journals and conference proceedings. Many of her publications are the result of interdisciplinary collaborative work with among others Peter Desain, Henkjan Honing, Richard Ashley, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and Zohar Eitan. Renee Timmers is editor with Nicola Dibben of Empirical Musicology Review and associate editor of Psychomusicology: Music Mind & Brain (from September 2012).
Research interests
- Interactions between emotion and cognition in music listening
- Expressive performance of music
- Perception and production of temporal aspects of music
- Cognitive neuroscience of performance
- Cross-modal and embodied cognition of music
Participate in research
Please visit the Music Mind Machine pages to check for possibilities to participate in ongoing research:
Music Mind Machine
Current projects
- Influences of emotions on expectation and attention in music perception. Collaboration with Harriet Crook
- Emotion and executive function in singing. Collaboration with Lawrence Parsons and Aaron Williamon
- Joint rhythm production. Collaboration with Lawrence Parsons, Ian Cross and Tommi Himberg
- Expressiveness in Music Performance: A cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach. Edited book with Dorottya Fabian and Emery Schubert
Scholarships and prizes
2012 British Academy International Partnership and Mobility Scheme (£27.230) with Zohar Eitan – Cross-modal perception of music.
2012 Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Music Performance as Creative Practice (£1.800). Fellowship to visit Oxford University and King’s College London. Expressive performance in contemporary music.
2011 University of Sheffield, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Research & Innovation Grant (£1,500) with Harriet Crook - Influences of emotions on perception and attention to auditory patterns.
2010 University of Sheffield, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Research & Innovation Grant, 2010 (£1,500) with Lawrence Parsons - Interpersonal coordination of rhythmic action in music: Psychological and neural aspects.
2009 British Academy Small Research Grant (£7,500) - The influence of emotional responses on attention and expectation in music perception.
2003 TALENT stipend from NWO (£8,600) for a five months visit to School of Music, Northwestern University, USA – The emotion of ornamentation in Baroque music.
2002 Hickman best paper award (£100), given at the SRPMME conference "Investigating Music Performance", London.
1999 NWO Scholarship (£1,000) to visit music cognition group of Caroline Palmer, Ohio University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
PhD students
- Marilyn Blank. Communication and coordination in piano duo’s
- Andrea Schiavio. Mirrors in music: Motor knowledge and musical intentionality
- Yuko Morimoto. Pleasure and boredom in music listening
- Theresa Veltri. Interactions between drug taking and music listening
Main publications
Brandmeyer, A., Timmers, R., Sadakata, M., & Desain, P. (2011). Learning expressive percussion performance under different visual feedback conditions. Psychological Research-Psychologische Forschung, 75 (2), 107-121.
Eitan, Z., & Timmers, R. (2010). Beethoven's last piano sonata and those who follow crocodiles: Cross-domain mappings of auditory pitch in a musical context. Cognition 114, 405-422.
Juslin, P.N., & Timmers, R. (2010). Expression and communication of emotion in music performance. In Juslin, P.N. & Sloboda, J.A. (Eds) Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, and Applications. Oxford University Press (pp. 453-489).
Timmers, R. (2007). Perception of music performance on historical and modern commercial recordings. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 122 (5), 2872-2880.
Timmers, R. (2007). Vocal expression in recorded performances of Schubert songs. Musicae Scientiae XI (2), 237-268.
Timmers, R. & Ashley, R. (2007). Emotional ornamentation in performances of a Handel sonata. Music Perception 25 (2), 117-134.
Timmers, R., Marolt, M, Camurri, A., & Volpe, G. (2006) Listeners´ emotional engagement with performances of a Scriabin etude: An explorative case study. Psychology of Music, 34 (4), 481-510.
Timmers, R. (2005) Predicting the similarity between expressive performances of music from measurements of tempo and dynamics. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117 (1), 391-399.
Timmers, R. (2003). On the contextual appropriateness of expression. Music Perception, 20 (3). 225-240.
Timmers, R. (2002). Freedom and constraints in timing and ornamentation: Investigations of music performance. Maastricht: Shaker Publishing.
Timmers, R., & Honing, H. (2002). On music performance, theories, measurement and diversity. In special issue on timing. M. A. Belardinelli (ed.). Cognitive Processing (International Quarterly of Cognitive Sciences) 1-2, 1-19.
Timmers, R., Ashley, R., Desain, P., Honing, H., & Windsor, L. W. (2002). Timing of ornaments in the theme of Beethoven´s Paisiello Variations: Empirical Data and a Model. Music Perception, 20 (1). 3-33.
Timmers, R., Ashley, R., Desain, P., & Heijink, H. (2000). The Influence of Musical Context on Tempo Rubato. Journal of New Music Research, 29 (2), 131-158.
Windsor, W. L., Desain, P., Aarts, R., Heijink, H., & Timmers, R. (2001). The timing of grace notes in skilled musical performance at different tempi: a case study. Psychology of Music, 29, 149-169.