Geoff Baker is Director of Research at the music charity Agrigento, emeritus professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a visiting research fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He is also a founding board member of SIMM (Social Impact of Making Music) and a member of the scientific committee of the French music education program Démos.

He specialises in music in Latin America, and he has published extensively on colonial Peru. Geoff also works on Latin American popular music, and he has a particular interest in contemporary urban music, above all in Cuba. More recently, his research has focused on childhood musical learning and music education in Cuba and Venezuela. He was co-investigator on the three-year project "Growing into Music," funded through the AHRC's Beyond Text scheme, and made a series of documentaries and short films about young musicians in Cuba and Venezuela.

He held a British Academy Research Development Award in 2010-11 and undertook extensive fieldwork in Venezuela on the country's famous orchestral music education program, El Sistema. He was awarded an AHRC Leadership Fellowship from 2017-19 to work on music, citizenship, social development, and urban renewal. He spent a year carrying out fieldwork in Medellín, Colombia, and he went on to publish a new book, Rethinking Social Action through Music: The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín's Music Schools (Open Book Publishers, 2021)

Geoff was Co-Investigator on the 3-year, AHRC-funded project Music for social impact: practitioners' contexts, work and beliefs." In his current work for Agrigento, Geoff continues to focus on music and social action, supporting projects and individuals in a number of countries. A list of current and former partnerships can be found here.

Mary Cohen is a Professor of Music Education at the University of Iowa, lead author of Music-Making in U.S. Prisons: Listening to Incarcerated Voices, and co-leader of the International Music and Justice Inquiry Network: IMAJIN Caring Communities—a collective organization with people from over 25 countries who work at the intersection of music-making and prisons. In 2025, she became an affiliate in Music and Peacebuilding with the Min-On Music Research Institute, based in Tokyo.

In her research and creative scholarship, Mary works to create caring communities through music-making, collaborative songwriting, and community singing circles. She led the Oakdale Community Choir, with a total of 300 non-incarcerated and incarcerated singers, from 2009-2020. The participants wrote 150 original songs, and the choir sang 75 of these songs. For two years (2023-2025) she co-led weekly music groups inside the Linn County Juvenile Detention Center. She created the Inside Outside Songwriting Collaboration Project with incarcerated and non-incarcerated partners who build relationships while creating original songs. She now co-leads the Singing Love into Life Circle inviting returning citizens to join the monthly singing circles.

She has been a keynote in Germany, Canada, Portugal, and England, interviewed by BBC3 Music Matters, and completed over 40 publications in journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings, including several co-authored with currently or formerly incarcerated members of our community.

Gideon Danja is a Lecturer at the University of Maiduguri and holds a PhD in Cultural Sustainability from the University of Maiduguri. His PhD included the project “Exploration of Applied Ethnomusicology in the Sustainability of Bura Gulum Performance in Hawul L.G.A of Borno State” through the University of Hildesheim (Germany).

Coming from a musical family genealogy, Gideon Danja is a scholar, musician, producer, visual artist, and cultural advocate specializing in applied ethnomusicology and the role of music in peacebuilding. His work focuses on using music and the arts as tools for social cohesion, conflict transformation, and cultural preservation. He was influenced by his father, a musician and musical instrument manufacturer, to join the music production scene in 1999 and became known as G2 Records/Danja Music. Gideon is a musician, instrumentalist and an award-winning music producer. As an audiophile enthusiast, he has produced a wide variety of artistes in Nigeria and around the world.

As the founder of Greater Future Academy Maiduguri, he is driven by a deep passion for nurturing and training children and young adults. His work reflects a strong commitment to education, community development, and the empowerment of youth through creative expression. Bridging academia and practice, he explores innovative approaches to peacebuilding by integrating indigenous musical traditions, visual arts, and responses to contemporary social challenges.

Gideon holds his Bachelor’s in Creative Arts from the University of Maiduguri and his MA in Theatre and Performing Arts, from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, with special interest in theatrical sound design. He lectured at the Federal College of Education (F.C.E), Zaria where he taught applied music, dance and technical theatre. He is also a member of the Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) and a qualified teacher with a Professional Diploma in Education, in F.C.E, Zaria.

Dr Gillian Howell is an award-winning music leader, creative director, and researcher, currently working as a Senior Research Fellow and Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne. She holds leadership roles as a member of the Steering Committee for the Creativity and Wellbeing Research Initiative and is the Arts and Peacebuilding Lead for the University of Melbourne’s Initiative for Peacebuilding.

Gillian’s community-engaged research and creative practice seek to advance our understanding of the cultural, social, and educational contributions of music-making in places impacted by war and settler-colonial violence. With a focus on music in peacebuilding, community dialogue, and the restoration of cultural practices post-crisis, her research is distinctively interdisciplinary and cross-sector in nature and makes original contributions to the scholarly fields of community music, applied ethnomusicology, peace and conflict studies, justice studies, and development studies. She has conducted research and led music co-creation workshops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sri Lanka, Timor- Leste, Georgia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and in every state of Australia; and led international research consultancies for Save the Children Middle East and Musicians Without Borders. She is currently the Director of Sound FX, a community music partnership established by the Australian cultural development organisation Tura in Fitzroy Crossing, remote north-west Australia. Her action research and songwriting collaboration with First Nations language educators has produced two albums of original songs and a songbook, Buga Yanu Junba (2025) with twenty-two original children’s songs in three endangered Aboriginal languages that is sold nationwide.

Gillian brings a unique combination of academic and industry expertise to her field, with over two decades of professional appointments as a music facilitator, creative director, and community engagement consultant with Australia's leading orchestras, contemporary art music organisations, and social music programs. Her awards and recognitions include two Australian Art Music Awards (in 2007 and 2020) and frequent invitations to give international keynotes and invited talks on topics of music, conflict, and social change. She is the former Chair and Commissioner of the International Society for Music Education's Community Music Activity Commission and holds honorary appointments with Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada), and the Creative Arts Research Institute, Griffith University in addition to her role as an Affiliate with MOMRI.

Fiona Magowan is Professor of Anthropology at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics and Fellow of The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast. She has been a member of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2017 and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy since 2023.

Her research in anthropology and ethnomusicology has addressed three interconnected areas: music, sound and movement; art, emotion and the senses; and religion, identity and transformation. She has conducted fieldwork among Yolngu of the Northern Territory of Aboriginal Australia since 1990; with Stolen Generation artists in South Australia; and recently with Australian musicians working with refugees. As a Fellow and Research Lead of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, she is examining comparative aspects of arts and conflict transformation, specifically through music, identity and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and around the globe. She has published eight books including, Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation (Bloomsbury 2023 co-edited) and Melodies of Mourning: Music and Emotion in Northern Australia (Oxford, James Currey 2007).

Fiona was educated at the universities of Nottingham in Music and Oxford in Social Anthropology and awarded a D.Phil at Oxford. She held lectureships in Anthropology at Manchester University (1993-96) and Adelaide University, South Australia (1996-2003). She has been Vice-President of the Australian Anthropological Society 2000-2002, Chair of the Anthropological Association of Ireland (2006-08), a member of the Royal Irish Academy's National Committee for Social Sciences (2009-2011; 2022-present) and Chair of the Music and Gender Symposium of the International Council for Traditional Music.

Phil Mullen is one of the world’s leading experts on musical inclusion, as an Irish music educator and community musician based in England. He is the director of Sound Society CIC, was Lecturer in both Community Arts and course leader for Community Music at Goldsmiths College, University of London for over twenty-five years.

Phil has worked for forty years developing music with people who are socially excluded. He specializes in working with excluded children and young people at risk. Phil has run training workshops and seminars in twenty-seven countries across Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia. In particular, he spent 8 years working in Northern Ireland using music as a tool for peace and reconciliation. Phil has been inclusion advisor to the UK’s national Sing Up programme and works with music organizations and schools around inclusion training and strategic development on inclusion.

Phil has a PhD from Winchester University on music making with young people with challenging behaviour, and a Master’s Degree in Community Music from the University of York. He is the author of the book Challenging Voices: Music Making with Children Excluded from School (2022), and the “Community Music” keyword for “Keywords for Music in Peacebuilding” (Music and Arts in Action, 2020).

Ai Nakatsuka is a music therapist who has worked with individuals with neurological and developmental disabilities in the USA, Sudan, the Netherlands, and Japan. She is currently working as a music therapist as well as clinical advisor and clinical supervisor for Epica. CO., Ltd. in Japan.

Ai has been engaged in community work in Sudan since 2017, beginning as a Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer, where she started a music therapy program at a school for individuals with disabilities in Khartoum. She later co-led several community music initiatives, including music education and Sudanese music research projects, as well as an online music project which started after the war began in April 2023.

Ai authored the video essay “Future Justice” (2021) about her work with the Khartoum Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir Project in Sudan. She also published the chapter “Is Music for Everyone? Surprising Notes in Sudan” (2024) and “Strength, potential, expressivity, and creativity: Music therapy at a school for individuals with disabilities in Sudan”(2025).

Ai holds her MA in Music Therapy from ArtEZ University of the Arts (Netherlands), received her Bachelor’s in Music Therapy from Slipper Rock University (US), and has a Bachelor’s in Social Work from Saitama Prefectural University (Japan). She was Research Affiliate for ArtEZ University of the Arts in the Netherlands and is currently an Affiliate of the Min-On Music Research Institute.

Andrea Rodríguez-Sánchez is a trained social worker and musician. She is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Corporación Universitaria del Caribe (University of the Caribbean) in Colombia. Her academic work focuses on peacebuilding through collective musical spaces in Colombia. She holds a Ph.D. in Peace, Conflict and Development from Jaume I University of Castellón, Spain, and is currently a member of the Peace Programme at the National University of Colombia.

Andrea’s research has focused on developing the concept of ‘social fabric,’ particularly how community social fabric can be reconstructed in post-conflict contexts. She has published extensively in both English and Spanish. In 2019, she was awarded “Best Doctoral Thesis in the Human Sciences” from the Jaume I University. In 2022, she received the “Young Scientist Research Award” from the Interamerican Network of Academies of Sciences.

Currently, Andrea organizes Sonido Colectivo, a collective of artist-scholar-practitioners in Colombia, which includes, in addition to a core group of researchers, a national network of community musicians and a network of universities interested in music and social construction. She has supported music education efforts at a national level in Colombia, including the creation of a diploma course in Peacebuilding through Music at the National University of Colombia or her research work about Batuta National Foundation. She belongs to the Social Impact of Music Making (SIMM), International Society of Music Education (ISME) and The Arts of Inclusion (TAI).

Kevin Shorner-Johnson is Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities; Professor of Music; and Director of Music Education at Elizabethtown College. In that capacity, he helped to launch the Master of Music Education program focused on Peacebuilding. Kevin is also the host of the Music and Peacebuilding Podcast.

His scholarship focuses on the intersection of peacebuilding and music education. As a teacher, he has applied his interests in ethics, spirituality, and peacebuilding to approach music coursework in ways that are rooted within an Anabaptist heritage of peacebuilding, intentional community, and ethical discernment. His work has been published in the Philosophy of Music Education Review, Journal of Medical Humanities, Music Educators Journal, International Journal of Music Education, Humane Education for the Common Good, and Advances in Music Education Research. Dr. Shorner-Johnson's most recent scholarship with Dr. Martha Gonzalez and Dr. Dan Shevock in The Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education, investigates how indigenous notions of care and convivencia might recolor our relationships with each other and the ecological world. In 2018, Kevin was named a "Peacemaker in our Midst" by the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg, for his on-the-ground peacebuilding work within Central Pennsylvania Latina/o communities.

Kevin holds an Ed.D. and M.M. in Music Education from the University of Georgia and a B.A. in Music Education from Northwest Missouri State University. He has taught high school, middle school, and elementary band in Greenfield, Iowa and Athens, Georgia. He is currently a member of the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association,and the National Association for Music Education.