John Sloboda


John Anthony Sloboda OBE FBA is Research Professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where he currently leads research on the Social Impact of Making Music . He is also Co-Director of , which works towards the aim of ensuring that all lives lost to armed violence, anywhere in the world, are properly recorded.
His academic work has mainly been in music psychology - a subdiscipline which draws together psychologists, neuroscientists and academic musicians. His research interests have focused on the psychological aspects of the study of music performance, the emotional response to music, the functions of music in everyday life, learning and skill acquisition in music, and audience-performer relations in the live concert. He was Professor of Psychology at Keele University, UK until 2008, where he now has emeritus status. He is a former Executive Director of the Oxford Research Group, an NGO that seeks to develop non-violent approaches to national and international security issues, from 2005-2009. He is also one of the founders of the Iraq Body Count Project. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy to dual membership of both the Psychology and History of Music sections. In 2017 he became founding President of , an international scholarly body for the study of the social impact of Making Music, and is Editor of the book series “Classic European Music Science Monographs” .
From 1975 to 1995 he was the founding Director of the Keele Bach Choir, a "town and gown" choir based on the Keele University campus. He a Patron of , an annual residential Music school that places particular emphasis on the music of the Roman Catholic liturgy. He currently collaborates with the singer Rafael Montero, founder of the early music group .

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