Professor Andrea Schiavio
Professor of Music Cognition and Education

Profile

Biography

Andrea received his PhD in Music from the University of Sheffield (2014), studying musical skill acquisition and development through the lens of embodied cognitive science. After his doctoral studies, he continued this research as postdoctoral fellow in the US (School of Music, Ohio State University), Turkey (Department of Psychology, Bosphorus University), and Austria (Institute for Music Education, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz) gaining relevant interdisciplinary experience. Between 2017 and 2022, Andrea worked at the Centre for Systematic Musicology of the University of Graz, where he led two research projects fully funded by the Austrian Science Fund. 

He is currently Co-Director of the Centre for Music Education and Human Flourishing (CeMEHF), Past President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM), and Principal Investigator of the €8 million European Research Council Synergy Grant REM@KE (Reconstructing Embodied Musical Knowledge at the Keyboard). Andrea is also editor of Musicae Scientiae (SAGE), and one of the three founders and editors of the newly established book series Music as Art and Science (OUP). 

Research

Overview

Andrea’s professional interests lie in: (i) the role of action and interaction in musical experience, (ii) the psychology of musical creativity and education, (iii) the acquisition and development of musical skills, (iv) the links between perception, emotion, culture, and music cognition, (v) the philosophical foundations of music psychology, and (vi) the collaboration of science and humanities in music research.

Current Projects and Collaborations

Andrea is currently investigating a range of topics at the intersection of cognitive science, music psychology, skill acquisition, and creativity research, with a particular focus on developing innovative empirical studies that combine quantitative and qualitative methods. This work spans both individual and social musical contexts and may extend to applications in health, rehabilitation, and wellbeing. If you have expertise in quantitative analysis, neuroscience, or experimental psychology and are interested in collaborating, please feel free to get in touch.

Publications

Selected publications

For a complete, up-to-date, list, please visit my personal website

Books 

van der Schyff, D., Schiavio, A., & Elliott, D. (2022). Musical bodies, musical minds. Enactive cognitive science and the meaning of human musicality. MIT Press.

Schiavio, A., Vuoskoski, J., & Kim, Y. (Eds., 2026). Music and the Cognitive Humanities. Interdisciplinary insights. Oxford University Press. .

Recent Journal articles

Di Stefano, N., Ansani, A., Schiavio, A., Saarikallio, S., Toiviainen, P., Brattico, E., & Spence, C. (2026). Consonance shapes the multisensory and emotional mappings of musical intervals across English- and Mandarin-speakers. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,1561, no. 1: e70337. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.70337.

Schiavio, A., Ansani, A., Di Stefano, N., Kempf, A., Spence, C., & Benedek, M. (2026). Higher creativity is linked to increased association scores in an audiovisual task. Cognition, 276, 10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106664.

Gibbs, H.J. & Schiavio, A. (2025). Flowing between gongs: Mixed-methods insights into shared flow and temporal distortion in music performance. PLoS ONE 20(2): e0302769.   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302769.

Di Stefano, N., Ansani, A., Schiavio, A., Saarikallio, S., & Spence, C. (2025). Audiovisual associations in Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. A cross-cultural investigation on the role of timbre. Empirical Studies of the Arts, online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/02762374241308810

Schiavio, A., Witek, M., & Stupacher, J. (2024). Meaning-making and creativity in musical entrainment. Frontiers in Psychology, 14:1326773. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1326773.

Kempf, A., Maes, P.-J., Gener, C., & Schiavio, A. (2024). Individual differences in music-induced interpersonal synchronization and self-other integration: The role of creativity and empathy. Royal Society Open Science, 11(11), 240654. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.240654.

Schiavio*, A., Popescu*, T., Kempf, A. & Timmers, R. (2024). Distinguishing between musical excepts learned by novices individually or in pairs (*shared first authorship). Psychology of Music, 52(4), 472-488. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356231212408.

Kempf, A., Benedek, M. & Schiavio, A. (2024). An observation of a negative effect of social cohesion on creativity in musical improvisation. Scientific Reports, 14, 2922.   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52350-7.

Di Stefano, N., Ansani, A., Schiavio, A., & Spence, C. (2024). Prokofiev was (almost) right: A cross-cultural investigation of auditory-conceptual associations in Peter and the Wolf. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31, 1735–1744.   https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02435-7.

Schiavio, A., Biasutti, M., Kempf, A., Popescu, T., & Benedek, M. (2024). The Processes and Relationships in Composers Scale. Construction and psychometric analysis of a new self-assessment inventory. Music Perception, 41(3), 217–231.   https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2024.41.3.217.

Owen, C., Egermann, H., & Schiavio, A. (2024). Putting musical feelings into words: Children's verbal descriptions of music-evoked experiences. Music & Science, 7, 1-21.  doi: 10.1177/20592043241265318.

Reybrouck, M., & Schiavio, A. (2024). Music performance as knowledge acquisition. A review and preliminary conceptual framework. Frontiers in Psychology, 5:1331806.  doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1331806.

Biasutti, M., Antonini Philippe, R., & Schiavio, A. (2024). “A choir is a social organism that needs human contact.” Conducting a choir during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Musicae Scientiae, 28(3), 539-557.   https://doi.org/10.1177/10298649231225713

Iddon, M., Jan, O., MacDonald, R., & Schiavio, A. (2024). Of embodied musical spaces and their creative ambiguity. Tempo, 78(310), 1-11.   doi:10.1017/S004029822400038X

Curwen, C., Timmers, R., & Schiavio, A. (2024). Action, emotion, and music-colour synaesthesia. An exploration of sensorimotor and emotional responses in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. Psychological Research, 88, 348-362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01856-2.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Solo Project

Postgraduate

• Philosophy and Psychology of Music Education
• Music and Human Flourishing
• Independent Study Module