The programme for RPPW20 will appear here at the beginning of April.
To be more eco-friendly, the programme will be electronic-only.
You will be able to access the document here, and there will be QR codes posted around the conference venue to quickly access it!
Keynote Speakers
We are delighted to announce our RPPW20 Keynote speakers!
The abstracts and talk titles will appear here forthwith, but you can bet on the talks being engaging and thought-provoking!
Anna Fiveash Junior Professor Chair Laboratory for Research on Learning and Development, Université Bourgogne Europe, Dijon Anna Fiveash holds a Junior Professor Chair position with the National Centre for Scientific Research in France, at the Université Bourgogne Europe (Dijon). Her research focuses on connections in the brain between music and language, specifically rhythm, prediction, and syntax. Anna was awarded the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council to lead her project at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development in Sydney, Australia, where she researched content and timing predictions in music and speech. Previous to this, she held two postdoctoral positions at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre in Lyon, France, where she researched rhythm processing in adults and children with and without developmental language disorders. She completed her PhD at Macquarie University in Sydney in 2017, her Master’s in Music, Mind, and Technology at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland in 2014, and her Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) at the Australian National University. Through her research, Anna aims to advance our understanding of music-language connections in the brain, contributing to both theoretical knowledge and practical applications in education and speech pathology.
Andrea Ravignani Professor Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome
Andrea Ravignani holds a BSc in Mathematics from La Sapienza University of Rome and Master’s degrees from Université Paris 1 and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He completed his PhD in Biology at the University of Vienna and served as a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. He is currently a Professor at Sapienza University of Rome and Honorary Professor at the Center for Music in the Brain (Aarhus University). He explores why humans are musical animals and how our neurocognitive capacities for music evolved. His interdisciplinary team employs various research approaches from neuroscience, ethology, psychology, linguistics, AI, bioacoustics, and primatology. His research focuses on the evolutionary and biological bases of music cognition and vocal sound production, and their roles in the origins of music and speech in humans. He seeks the building blocks of musical abilities by studying behaviors and sounds in both humans and other species, aiming to explain why humans are musical animals. Ultimately, his research addresses fundamental questions about human nature: Are we so different from other animals? Why do we spend so much time listening to and making music when it seems to lack a clear biological function—or does it?
Petri Toiviainen Professor Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain, University of Jyväskylä
Petri Toiviainen received his MSc in theoretical physics in 1987 and his PhD in musicology in 1996, both from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Since 2002, he has held the position of Professor of Music at the University of Jyväskylä. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell University and a visiting fellow at Stanford University. From 2008 to 2013, he served as the head of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research, located at the universities of Jyväskylä and Helsinki. In 2014–2018, he held an Academy Professorship granted by the Academy of Finland. Since 2022, he has been leading the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body, and Brain, focusing on interdisciplinary research into music cognition and its links to neurobiology. His research interests include the study of music and movement, music processing in the brain, and music information research. He has utilized motion capture and brain imaging to explore how music influences movement and brain activity. His work integrates empirical research and computational methods to investigate how music engages cognitive, emotional, and motor processes, contributing to the broader field of music cognition research.
Erin Hannon Professor Psychological and Brain Sciences Program, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)
Erin Hannon is a Professor in the Psychological and Brain Sciences program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Cornell University and was an Assistant Professor at Harvard University before joining UNLV. With 20 years of research in music cognition, her work focuses on the development of musical rhythm perception and enculturation. She investigates how rhythmic perceptual abilities and behaviors develop with age and experience, and how cross-cultural variations in the listener’s musical environment influence these abilities. Additionally, she explores the development of emotional responses to music, such as groove and chills, and how individual differences in musicality relate to language, cognitive abilities, and emotion. Hannon is an expert on the cross-cultural development of music and language perception and cognition. Her research on culture-specific musical abilities has received funding from UNLV, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Department, and the Misophonia Research Fund. Her work has been published in top journals in psychology and developmental science. Beyond her research, she has provided extensive editorial service and held leadership roles at UNLV and in national and international professional organizations, contributing significantly to the field globally and locally.