Speakers
Alex Ruthmann
Alex Ruthmann is Associate Professor of Music Education and Music Technology at NYU Steinhardt where he teaches courses at the intersection of music, education, technology, design and entrepreneurship. Professor II at HVL, Norway. Alex leads the NYU Music Experience Design Lab (MusEDLab.org), which researches and co-designs new technologies and experiences for music making, learning and engagement with youth, school, community, and industry partners. He serves as an affiliate faculty at NYU Shanghai's Program on Creativity and Innovation and NYU Steinhardt's Digital Media Design for Learning programs. At New York University Ruthmann co-developed the Play With Your Music MOOC in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and P2PU. He works collaboratively with student and faculty researchers in the NYU Music and Audio Research Lab on applying user and experience design methods to music technology applications.
Margret Juliana Sigurdardottir
Margret Juliana Sigurdardottir made a swift change in her career when she founded the Mussila game studio in Reykjavik in early 2015 along with computer engineer Hilmar Thor Birgisson. Margret is a mom and a versatile musician with a postgraduate degree from the Royal Academy of Music in London and now she has poured her passion for music into the Mussila Music School educational mobile app for kids. Mussila´s aim is to make music education widely accessible to children and bridge the gap between learning and understanding the written language of music - and the joy of playing. With a steadily growing number of more than half a million users, Mussila has grown into a mature educational game that is loved and played by children all over the world.
Sigrid Jordal Havre
Sigrid Jordal Havre is the head of Media Lab and Learning Labs at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL). Media Lab is the university’s competence unit for development and use of learning technology, digital media and new technology in teaching, research, and dissemination. From 2020 she has been working with developing and running Learning Labs at HVL’s five campuses. Previously she worked as a lecturer, researcher, and a supervisor of bachelor - and master students in the field of music education and technology with a special interest in learning through play with interactive technology and video games.
Skúli Gestsson
Skúli Gestsson is a Ph.D. candidate in Music Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. He has had a twenty-year career in popular music with his band Dikta. The band won the Icelandic Music Prize in 2010 and 2011 and has toured internationally. Alongside his successful 17 year career in rock music, Skúli has been a music teacher in Icelandic schools since 2008, co-written textbooks in music, and was a curriculum consultant in Björk's Biophilia Education Project which was implemented in all of the 7 Nordic countries recently. He currently teaches at an independent PreK-5 school in Seattle.
Ragna Skinner
Ragna Skinner is a project manager at the University of Iceland and part-time a lecturer at the Iceland University of the Arts and has both worked as a private music teacher and as an elementary school music teacher. She previously lived in the UK gaining her BSc (hons) in Audio Technology and CT ABRSM in Piano Teaching. After years of experience as a piano teacher, sound engineer and musician she returned to her native Iceland to gain her MA in Art Education. During her MA she focused on the Biophilia Educational Project as it combined her main interests: interdisciplinary education, the importance of arts in education and new technologies in education. She has given presentations and shared her Biophilia teaching experiences with various groups both in Iceland and abroad and delivered Biophilia teacher training courses in Iceland and North-Macedonia. In 2017 she worked with Björk and a Finnish science teacher on updating the current teaching guidelines for the Biophilia Educational Project.
Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir
Dr. Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir is Professor of Music Education at the University of Iceland, School of Education. She teaches music pedagogy for elementary and middle school as well as courses in early childhood music methods. Her research focuses on musical development in children. She is a board member of the MERYC (European Network for Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children) since 2015 and on the steering committee for the international research project AIRS (Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing) since 2012.
Adam Switala
Adam Świtała is a composer, musician, teacher and researcher. PhD Student and Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Education, University of Iceland, member of the Advocacy Standing Committee of the International Society for Music Education (ISME). 2018-2020 member of the Editorial Board of the ISME/Routledge book series „Specialist Themes in Music Education”. 2017-2020 Board Member of the Polish Music Council, 2017-2018 President of the Polish Association for Music Education. His professional record includes cooperation with theatre directors, actors, dance and performance artists, more than 20 theatres, educational and art institutions, in several European countries and the USA.