“I love the way music challenges the sciences and the humanities to work together.”
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis approaches music from the combined perspectives of music theory/musicology and cognitive science. Her book On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (Oxford University Press) received the 2014 Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory, and the 2015 ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award. Her latest book The Psychology of Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) was published in 2018. Her cross-cultural research on narrative perceptions of music is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Her work has appeared in journals ranging from the Journal of Music Theory to the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. She is President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC), and has served in the past on the Board of Directors and as Treasurer. She has also served on the Executive Board of the Society for Music Theory (SMT). Her work has been featured in media outlets ranging from NPR (Science Friday and All Things Considered) to the BBC. Before coming to Princeton, she was Distinguished Professor at the University of Arkansas. She has also served as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, UK and as a faculty member at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
PhD Columbia University
MA Columbia University
BM Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University
Grant, Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, National Science Foundation
Kavli Fellowship, National Academy of Sciences
Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award, American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
Wallace Berry Award, Society for Music Theory
Summer Scholar, National Endowment for the Humanities
Faculty Gold Medal for Outstanding Mentoring of Undergraduates, University of Arkansas
Teaching Award for Undergraduate Research, University of Arkansas
Courses
- MUS 560: Music Cognition Lab
- MUS 561: Music Cognition Lab
- MUS 248: Music Cognition
- MUS 560: Music Cognition Lab
- MUS 528: Seminar in Musicology: Current Topics in Empirical Musicology
- MUS 510: Extramural Research Internship
- MUS 229 / HUM 230: Music and Language
- MUS 510: Extramural Research Internship
- MUS 528: Seminar in Musicology: Professional Development
- MUS 248: Music Cognition
- MUS 524: Collisions
- MUS 527: Seminar in Musicology
- MUS 300: Junior Seminar
- MUS 435: Music and Narrative
- MUS 248: Music Cognition
