Keynote

Dr. Sarah J. Bartolome, an Associate Professor of Music Education at Northwestern University, is a children’s music specialist with an interest in world music for the classroom. She earned degrees in music education from Ithaca College (BM), Northwestern University (MM), and the University of Washington (PhD), where she also studied ethnomusicology. 

Dr. Bartolome’s scholarship has been published in such journals as the Journal of Research in Music Education, Research Studies in Music Education, the International Journal of Community Music, and the Music Educators Journal. She is the author of World Music Pedagogy V: Choral Music Education (Routledge, 2019) and co-author of a forthcoming book on gender expansive music education (Routledge, 2027). Her research interests include participatory singing cultures globally, singing for health and wellbeing, and world music pedagogy. She is a frequent clinician at regional, national, and international conferences and has completed music fieldwork in Ghana, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Panama, and Vietnam. In 2013, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Vilnius, Lithuania where she spent five months teaching at the Vilnius Pedagogical University and conducting research with local folk ensembles and choirs. 

At Northwestern, Dr. Bartolome serves as the Co-Director of the Music for Childhood Wellbeing Initiative, an interdisciplinary research effort investigating the impact of group singing on children. She also serves as the lead music researcher on the Heartsong Choir Initiative, a research partnership with Lurie Children’s Hospital serving children with congenital heart disease, and Co-Investigator for NeuroMusic NU, a randomized control trial investigating the impact of music training on older adults with mild cognitive decline. In addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate courses at Northwestern University, she is also the Associate Director of the Evanston Children’s Choir.