Research output per year
Research output per year
I am an artist-researcher, composer and improviser, originally from Herefordshire, and now based in the north of England.
My research primarily explores the practices, ethics, and applications of improvisation and spontaneous creativity. I'm interested in how improvisation-as-performance can help us to explore complex social, environmental, and political relationships, as well as how the aesthetic worlds and relationships emergent in improvised performance can refract, reflect, and inform our lives and societies.
I'm currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Creative Manchester. I was ecently the lead postdoctoral researcher on a National Institute for Health Research School for Social Care research funded project evaluating the impact of an improvised music-making training programme for social care staff within residential dementia care contexts. Recently, I've also led as a research associate on a six-month study evaluating arts-based participatory research approaches in cultural partnerships with the University of Manchester.
My postdoctoral project Improvising in the Field is currently mapping how practices of improvisation are applied across health, wellbeing, and community-based projects within the UK in music, dance, and theatre. I'm a co-investigator on the project Moss Worlds, which brings together an interdisciplinary team from literature studies, urban planning, history, biology, sound art, geography, and community arts practice to explore the botanical, political, and aesthetic properties of urban mosses.
I came to the University of Manchester in June 2023, having completed my PhD at the University of Huddersfield School of Music/School of Drama, Dance, and Performance across the Covid-19 pandemic. My doctoral project was a practice-led study investigating transdisciplinary improvising practices, with a substantial component addressing intersections of gender, racialisation, embodiment, and the axiologies of practice in communities of improvisers in Europe and North America from 1950 to the present.
Between 2019 - 2023, during my PhD, I was a part-time lecturer at the University of Huddersfield School of Music, where I developed and led an undergraduate module-component on Free Improvisation for students of diverse musical backgrounds. I also maintain a role as Visiting Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where I have co-developed and co-taught a short course in interdisciplinary improvisation practice, encompassing improvisation and sociality, improvisation and politics, with co-ordinator Dr. Maria Sappho.
My professional arts practice draws across the performing and fine-arts disciplines, and I have worked internationally in contemporary composition for concert and stage, live performance, gallery installation, audiovisual production, recording, arts pedagogy and residency contexts. I have an interest in issues of artistic practice and marginalised identity, particularly around LGTBQ(+) and disability visibility, agency, and advocacy.
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Huddersfield
Sept 2019 → May 2023
Award Date: 15 May 2023
Master of Arts, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
2017 → 2018
Bachelor of Music, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
2013 → 2017
Part-Time Lecturer (Music), The University of Huddersfield
2022 → 2023
Visiting Lecturer, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
Mar 2020 → …
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Book/Report › Book
McPherson, H. (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Research