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ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Professor Valerie Ross, PhD, MEd, BMus (Hons), DRSAMD, is an established composer, music educator and researcher with works premiered in major cities in Europe and the Asia Pacific. Her compositions range from solo pieces to full evening music-dance theatre productions. She is a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, University of London and Deakin University. Her music has been selected for performances at various events and festivals including the International Rostrum of Composers, Paris ,  International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World Music Days in Warsaw, Stockholm and Essen,  and International  Gamelan Festival,  Kuala Lumpur.  Vienna Radio (ORF) produced her portrait concert as part of its Composer of the Year Series.  She has received compositional awards from the Rockefeller Foundation (Serbelloni), Japan Foundation (Embattled Garden) and Commonwealth Foundation (Tathagata, where she was presented to Her Majesty at Lancaster House in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II as Head of the Commonwealth). Valerie was a resident composer at the Darmstadt International Institute for New Music and the Bellagio Study and Conference Centre, a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Musical Research, University of London, visiting scholar at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, head of music therapy and rehabilitation research group, Universiti Teknologi MARA and visiting professor at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts.

Valerie engages in translational music-science research collaborating with experts in the fields of medicine (cardiac surgery rehabilitation), electrical engineering (EEG studies), optometry science (eye-motion tracking),  occupational therapy (sensory integration therapy) and special education (children with ASD). A snapshot of her work, ‘Women in Music Research’ was featured at the 2016 International Women’s Day Celebration in Cambridge.  She has received research grants from the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia. Experienced in academic assurance auditing, Valerie served on the Board of Accreditation, Malaysian Qualifications Agency. Professor Ross is the Director of the Centre for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College, Cambridge. 

Her current studies focus on the creation of music and audio-visual content for clinical and home-based use in the field of complementary and integrative medicine (www.bespokemusicnarration.com).Her publications include ‘Bespoke Music-Narration as Complementary Therapy: Reaching Disadvantaged Communities through Translational Music-Medicine Research’, Malaysian Journal of Medicine and Health Sciences (2022); ‘COVID-19 Pandemic : Innovative Digital Tool Using Progressive Muscle Relaxation to Promote Mental Health Among Frontline Healthcare Workers’, Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing (2021); ‘Bespoke Music-Narration for Mental Health using Progressive Muscle Relaxation in COVID-19 Times’, International Journal of Service Management and Sustainability (2020); ‘Nature’s Way of Healing’, GADING Journal of Science and Technology (2019); ‘Translational Research in Music’, International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Science Studies (2018); ‘Music in Painting: Painting in Music’, Idealogy Journal (2018); ‘Translating Intercultural Creativities in Community Music’, Oxford Handbook of Community Music (2018);  ‘Framing  Intercultural Music Composition Research’,  Routledge International Handbook of Intercultural Arts Research (2016); ‘Music Intervention in Eye – Motion Tracking of Children with Autism’, Academic Journal of Science (2015); ‘Pursuit position gain, fixation duration and saccadic gain with music intervention in eye motion tracking’, SAI Intelligent Systems (2015); ‘Stimulating the Brain through Auditory Entrainment’, Sustainability in Music and the Performing Arts, UPSI (2014); ‘Violinists playing with and without music notation during performance: Investigating hemispheric brainwave activity‘, Intelligent Systems for Science and Information, Springer(2013);  ‘Music Learning and Performing: Applying Written and Oral Strategies’, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier (2013);  ‘Cue from Cage: Designing Ragaslendro’, Malaysian Music Journal (2013); ‘Preliminary study on the effects of music on human brainwaves’ , ICCAIS-IEEE Explore (2012); ‘From Transformative Outcome Based Education to Blended Learning’, Futures, Elsevier Publications (2012).  

For further information about CIMACC, kindly contact :

Professor Valerie Ross
Director, Centre for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College, Cambridge CB3 ODS Email: vr270@cam.ac.uk