Joshua Albrecht
Biography
Dr. Joshua Albrecht joined the Kent State University School of Music's theory faculty in 2019. Previously, he taught at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor for seven years as an associate professor of music theory and technology. Dr. Albrecht taught the entire undergraduate music theory sequence as well as music technology and music psychology. He holds a Ph.D. in music theory from Ohio State University, specializing in music cognition and systematic musicology with a specialization in teaching, studying with David Huron. Before attending Ohio State, he earned his master's degree in music theory with an emphasis in composition from the University of Texas (2007), and his Bachelor of Music in music history/theory from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (2005).
Currently, he serves as an associate editor for Psychomusicology and has served on the executive board of the Texas Society for Music Theory. Since 2012, he has had 24 publications, representing four peer-reviewed articles, 14 proceedings journal articles, three forthcoming book chapters, and three reviews, appearing in Music Theory Online, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Empirical Musicology Review, and the Proceedings of the International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition. In demand as a presenter, Dr. Albrecht has presented 26 papers and 10 posters at international, national, and regional conferences in both music theory and music cognition, and has presented 19 invited talks at academic institutions. Internationally, he is currently collaborating on a research project at the University of Cologne in Germany.
Dr. Albrecht's primary research area is in integrating innovative empirical methodologies with more traditional humanities research to examine music theoretical questions, which are manifested in many different ways. Recently, his research has concentrated on looking at how music expresses emotional meaning. He has published and presented on the effects of oral transmission on the structure of folk music, applying digital humanities methodology to big musical datasets, modeling historical change in musical structures, examining the effect of vocal timbre on meaning in the music of Tom Waits, looking at the effect of collaborative music making on perceptions of social bonding, and using reaction times in music to model the role of musical expectation in folk music.