Dr. Heather Moquin


October 2011 - August 2012

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Information about the Fulbright Professorship

Dr. Heather Moquin has been awarded a Simon Research Fellowship at IASH to study communicative musicality as dialogue within community drama classes.

This research will explore methods of community interaction that are useful for connection within community and for developing a positive sense of self. Drawing upon Malloch & Trevarthen's (2009, p. 4) definition of 'communicative musicality' as "melodic and rhythmic co-creativity", I will explore dialogic methods within adult education drama classes as participants connect, learn and create together. In applying the notion of communicative musicality to adult education classes to consider therapeutic benefits, I am interested in how such a definition of dialogue aligns with Freire's (1973, p. 69; p. 76) descriptions of education as "the practice of freedom" and as "dialogue...between [people], mediated by the world, in order to name the world". I wish to examine the new dimensions brought to Freire's notion of dialogue when focusing on non-verbal aspects of dialogue highlighted within communicative musicality as intersubjectivity while also considering potentially new dimensions of communicative musicality that may be offered within Freire's pedagogical perspective. Through auto-ethnographic and qualitative research methods, I wish to also document and explore understandings of the use of such dialogic pedagogies within community drama classes.

 

 

Contact Details:
Email: Heather Moquin
Tel: 0131 650 4395
Address:
Room 8
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
The University of Edinburgh
Hope Park Square
Edinburgh EH8 9NW