Franziska Schroeder

I am a saxophonist, theorist, and a senior lecturer at the School of Creative Arts and a Fellow of the HEA (Higher Education Academy in the UK). I serve on the peer review panel for the UK's AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) and am a registered expert for the EU's Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA).

I was awarded my PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2006, and have since written for many international journals, including Leonardo, Organised Sound, Performance Research, Cambridge Publishing and Routledge. I have published a book on performance and the threshold, an edited volume on user-generated content and in 2014 a book on improvisation entitled "Soundweaving".

I have performed with many international musicians including Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, Stelarc, the Avatar Orchestra, and Evan Parker, and released two CDs on the creative source label, a CD with Slam records, and a 2015 album (entitled 'Barely Cool" with improvisors from Brazil) on the pfmentum label.

I sit on on the steering committee for the DRHA (Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts) conference, for which I was the Program Chair in 2010. I was also the Artistic Director of the 2012 and the 2016 Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music, and is the initiator for the annual symposium series that runs alongside the Sonorities Festival.

I was an AHRC Research Fellow between 2007-2009, where I investigated network performance environments. In 2013 I was awarded one of five prestigious HEA Prof Sir Ron Cooke International Fellowships to carry out ethnographic work on improvisation in Brazil. In 2016 A Santander Mobility Scholarship extended my ethnographic enquiry into free improvisation practices into Portugal.

Research
Franziska' research interests include the intersection of critical theory and digital performance, the role of the body in the age of technological change, as well as free improvisation practices.

Teaching
BMus and BA Performance Module Convenor for Performance Modules.
School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast. All academic and administrative tasks.

Head of the Music Performance Programme, guiding over 145 performance students and liaising with around 40 tutors instrumental specialists and several community organisations.

Publications
Disabled Musicians Designing Music Instruments in VR

Multi-mindedness: Manyness in improvisation? Fernando Pessoa and Free Improvisation

Improvising with digital musical instruments for enhancing social inclusion

Projects
Documenting how the arts and storytelling can save lives: The Viet Nam Breast Cancer project

Real-Time Performance in Virtual Worlds

Big ears - Sonic art for public ears

Impact
Distributed Listening – socially engaged art

Performance Without Barriers - Designing inclusive music technologies to transform lives of disabled musicians

Being Human - a festival of the humanities (Northern Ireland Hub)