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 USA (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.
He was recently awarded, as one of three Principal Investigators, an €8 million European Research Council Synergy Grant for the project REM@KE (Reconstructing Embodied Musical Knowledge at the Keyboard). This project aims to achieve the physical and digital reconstruction of historic musical instruments that are currently too damaged to be played. It will leverage tools from embodied cognitive science to explore the meaningful connections musicians have had - and continue to have - with these instruments.
Andrea is the Past President of ESCOM (European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music), having served as President from 2021 to 2024, and is one of the three founders and editors of the newly established book series Music as Art and Science (OUP) In addition to a recently published co-authored monograph for MIT Press (Musical bodies, musical minds. Enactive cognitive science and the meaning of human musicality), his work appears in venues such as Music Perception, Scientific Reports, Psychology of Music, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Royal Society Open Science, and The Oxford Handbook of Musical Performance, among others.
Departmental roles
- Chair of the School Research and Practice Committee
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.
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., under contract). Music and the Cognitive Humanities. Interdisciplinary insights. Oxford University Press.
Recent Journal articles
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.
