Singing in Balance

Who we are

Singing in Balance is an academic and practitioner network on tuning and supporting socio-musical dymanics in group singing. We are funded by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities. The Network comprises three PhD researchers, three academic supervisors, and three partners.

Each project focuses on the mental, physical and social benefits of group singing for different populations, including, but not limited to, people experiencing homelessness and people with chronic health conditions.

Leeds partnership: Bruna Martins, Freya Bailes, Kate Wareham.

Sheffield partnership: Emily Cooper, Renee Timmers, Mir Jansen.

York partnership: Dana Greaves, Helena Daffern, Emma Baylin.

Bruna Martins

Bruna is a postgraduate researcher working within the School of Music at the University of Leeds. Her doctoral research explores the socio-musical factors that shapes the experiences of members of choirs affected by homelessness. The project is funded by the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities and is a partnership with the Choir With No Name, an organisation of choirs in the UK for people affected by homelessness.

Research interests - Bruna's primary area of interest is in arts, music and wellbeing. Specifically, she is interested in the impact of engagement with artistic activities on people’s physical and mental wellbeing. She is also interested in the applications of arts-based and participatory methods. Bruna has been involved in the following research projects:

Social Action as an active ingredient promoting youth mental health (link) (link 2)
How UK arts organisations can continue to support young people’s wellbeing during and beyond Covid-19 (link)
Functions of nostalgic music (in Portuguese) (link)

Emily Cooper

Emily is a PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield, UK. She first came to Sheffield in 2018 to pursue her undergraduate degree in Music, followed by a master’s in the Psychology of Music, which she completed in 2022. Emily has a paper published on Group Singing for People with Inducible Laryngeal Obstruction. She began her doctoral research in October 2023.

Her PhD focuses on the potential benefits of singing for individuals with respiratory health conditions. Respiratory disease affects one in five people and is the third leading cause of death in England (NHS England). Growing evidence suggests that breathing and singing techniques may help alleviate physical symptoms, particularly breathlessness.

At present, Emily is researching group singing sessions designed for people with long-term health conditions, including long Covid, asthma, COPD, and bronchiectasis.

For updates on Emily's PhD journey, follow her Instagram: @study_and_sing

Dana Greaves

Dana L. C. Greaves (she/her) is a PhD student who joined the AudioLab in October, 2023. She graduated from the University of Leeds in 2023 where she completed her MA in Music Psychology and holds a BA in Jazz and Contemporary Popular Music (Vocal Performance Major) from MacEwan University in her hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is grateful to be funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) through WRoCAH (White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities). Currently, her research is on the functions of singing and community building in group singing interventions through using VR group singing technology to isolate the musical aspects of this experience. Her previous research has focused on gendered experiences in music, anger processing and mood/affect regulation, personality and identity, aesthetics in music, and social psychology.

Outside of the lab, she has worked as a professional gigging and recording musician for a decade and loves to play video games and Dungeons and Dragons.

Dr Freya Bailes

Freya joined the University of Leeds in 2015, pursuing interests in the under-explored links between mental imagery and creativity in music, combining her research experience in experimental psychology with her education and insight as a musician. Freya is oboist with a particular enjoyment of orchestral and chamber music performance.

Prior appointments include Lecturer in Music at the University of Hull (2012–15), and Senior Research Fellow at the MARCS Institute at the University of Western Sydney, where she collaborated with Professor Roger Dean on research into the perception and emotional expression of contemporary music, and the role of leadership in musical improvisation. This research drew on her previous post-doctoral experience at the L.E.A.D. (Universite de Bourgogne), the C.S.M.L. (Ohio State University), and the Sonic Communications Research Group (University of Canberra).

Freya's doctoral thesis 'Musical Imagery: Hearing and Imagining Music' explored the nature and prevalence of musical imagery (University of Sheffield). Years later, and she's still fascinated by the phenomenon of imagining music in the mind's ear, having guest edited a special issue on the topic for the journal Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain (2015). More recent work examines the relationship between imagining music and different aspects of wellbeing.

Music for Healthy Lives: Research and Practice Network - https://musicforhealthylives.org/
Music Psychology @ Leeds: https://music-psych.leeds.ac.uk/

Prof Renee Timmers

Renee's first degree was in Musicology (MA), which she studied in Amsterdam. Thereafter, she pursued a PhD in Psychology (Social Sciences) at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Renee was involved in collaborative research combining perspectives and methods from psychology, computer science and music theory to investigate perception and cognition of music. Her main focus was on (cognitive) rules that underlie the expressive timing of music, but also the freedom that performers have to perform music expressively and creatively within these rules.

After her PhD, Renee was a postdoctoral researcher for six years at institutes in Italy (University of Genoa), Austria (OEFAI), the UK (Kings College London), the Netherlands (Radboud University Nijmegen) and the USA (Northwestern University). She worked at departments of music, psychology and computer science gaining relevant cross-disciplinary experience. Her research focused on the communication of emotions through music performance, including a comparison of emotional expression in early and later recordings of Schubert songs, and the development of automated visual feedback on expressive performance.

In Sheffield, Renee teaches Psychology of Music at UG and PG level, directs the MAs in Psychology of Music, and directs the research centre ‘Music Mind Machine in Sheffield’. The centre promotes collaboration and exchange across disciplines and between people with shared interests in music cognition, including students and staff. Renee regularly organises events within the context of the research centre and beyond, including conferences, seminars and workshops.

With her colleagues, Renee is exploring new conference formats that promote geographical inclusivity of people at a lower financial and ecological cost, by combining live and virtual participation. She has been co-editor of Empirical Musicology Review, associate editor of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind & Brain, and served on the editorial board of several journals including Psychology of Music and Journal of New Music Research. She has interrupted these editorial duties to serve as president of ESCOM from 2019-2021.

Dr Helena Daffern

Helena is currently a Professor in Music Technology in the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of York. She received a BA (Hons.) degree in music, an M.A. degree in music, and the PhD in music technology, all from the University of York, UK, in 2004, 2005, and 2009. She went on to complete training as a classical singer at Trinity College of Music and worked in London as a singer and teacher before returning to York. Her research utilises interdisciplinary approaches to investigate voice science and acoustics, particularly singing performance, vocal pedagogy, choral singing and singing for health and wellbeing. Recent projects explore the potential of virtual reality to improve access to group singing activities and as a tool for singing performance research.

Kate Wareham

Kate is Chief Executive of The Choir with No Name. The Choir with No Name is a network of choirs founded on the premise that singing makes you feel good; it distracts you from all the nonsense in life and helps you to build confidence, skills and genuine, long-lasting friendships. Choir members are people who have experienced homelessness, or who are simply going through a tough time in their lives. We aim to help members to build their confidence and skills, and make genuine lifelong friendships, so that they are in a better position to tackle the other challenges in their lives and move away from homelessness in the long-term. Prior to the Choir with No Name, Kate has worked in organisational leadership positions for organisations such as Yorkshire Dance and Orchestras for All, and within fundraising management at organisations such as Depaul UK, The Children’s Society, Home-Start and George House Trust. Kate has completed a PhD at the University of Sheffield which explored the music listening practices of young people aged 16-25 living in temporary accommodation.

Mir Jansen

Mir is the arts coordinator at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She co-designs and develops creative interventions for patient groups, often in response to requests from clinical experts. Her main interest is to embed creative health into the NHS hospital system by collating evidence that keeping people socially connected and creatively engaged will support people’s wellbeing in the community.

Her background is in visual arts but at our Trust she have worked with musicians, choreographers, poets, crafts people and composers who have worked with people with a specific medical conditions, often over long periods of time. Her work with the University of Sheffield’s Department for Music started in 2018 with a project for people with hearing impairment, with input from Dr Harriet Crook, Organisational Lead for Healthcare Science in ENT and Professor Renee Timmers. Since then this team has worked with people with voice box issues (Inducible Laryngeal Obstruction) that involved MA student Emily Cooper who is now working with us on her PhD to see how singing can support people with chronic fatigues and respiratory issues.

Emma Baylin

Emma is the founder and director of Shared Harmonies and a highly skilled facilitator and trainer. She is passionate about sharing the amazing benefits of singing with others, especially with those who believe they can’t sing! She specialises in delivering our corporate services and working with people with long term health conditions, poor mental health or experiences of trauma.

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