Dr Shu Jiang MA, DMA

• BA (Musicology, emphasis in Chinese music), Shanghai Conservatory of Music, China
• MA and PhD (Ethnomusicology), University of Sheffield, UK

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

I come from a family of traditional musicians and learned to play Chinese zithers (the 21-stringed zheng and 7-stringed qin) and piano in my childhood. I joined the University of Birmingham in September 2024 and combine my current post with an academic faculty appointment at the University of Sheffield. Previously, I have taught at the University of Nottingham and served as a full-time Lecturer in Music at Xiamen University and Zhejiang Normal University in China.

As an experienced university teacher, I have taught more than twenty modules at five leading institutions over the past two decades. I have convened undergraduate and postgraduate courses focusing on music in Asia, ethnomusicological theory and methods, global music studies, fieldwork methods, and music education together with supervising dissertations in ethnomusicology, popular music studies and varied related areas.

As a Chinese zither player, I was appointed as a World Musician by Live Music Now and have delivered over a hundred Chinese music workshops and concerts in care homes, hospitals, communities, and schools in the UK from 2008 to 2011. I work and collaborate alongside a range of composers and world musicians exploring and investigating cross-cultural music making.

Undergraduate modules

• Year 1 core module: Music and its Cultures (with Dr Amy Brosius, Professor Andrew Kirkman)
• Year 2 core module: Critical Musicology (with Dr Christopher Haworth)

Postgraduate modules

• Fieldwork Methods

My general areas of expertise include transcultural music making, the global history of music and music analysis, ethnomusicological theory and method, music education and East Asian musical culture. I serve as an external examiner for the Doctorate of Musical Arts Degree at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney, and was invited as a member of an Academic Review Panel for the Taylor & Francis Publishing Group to provide expert review on ethnomusicology subject(s).