Research

Current Interests

  • Social Bonding in the Silent Disco

  • Leading and Following in Tango

  • Perception of Randomness in Chance Music

  • Perception of Audio-Visual Synchrony

  • Sexual Dimorphism of the Human Singing Voice

  • Blockchain art and online communities

A Song and Dance for Peace

Music and dance have a unique ability to bring people closer together, but we don't really understand why. This research project, based at the University of Oxford, will aim to discover how music and dance create a social bonding effect, from both an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Increased academic understanding of music and dance is desperately needed to develop evidence based community building projects, to bridge widening divides in our societies.

See Joshua's profile as a UWA Inclusion Leader.

Publications

Articles

Bamford, J. S., Tarr, B., & Cohen, E. (2022). Processing fluency for visual synchrony perception. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fyaec

Kolesnikov, A., Bamford, J. S., Andrade, E., Montalti, M., Langiulli, N., Parmar, M., Guerra, M., Gallese, V., & Umiltà, M. A. (2021). Simulating musical rotation, contour and notes: the perception of (e)motion in nonmusicians. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/nuzc9

Bannan, N., Bamford, J. S., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2022). The evolution of gender dimorphism in the human voice: the role of octave equivalence. Current Anthropology. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:12819bce-6066-4ee0-841e-c6ac831afdac

Dunbar, R. I. M., Pearce, E., Tarr, B., Makdani, A., Bamford, J. S., Smith, S., & Mcglone, F. (2021). Cochlear SGN neurons elevate pain thresholds in response to music. Scientific Reports, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93969-0

Hansen, N. Chr., Treider, J. M. G., Swarbrick, D., Bamford, J. S., Wilson, J., & Vuoskoski, J. K. (2021). A Crowd-Sourced Database of Coronamusic: Documenting Online Making and Sharing of Music During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Frontiers in Psychology, 12(June), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.684083

Bamford, J. S., & Davidson, J. W. (2017). Trait empathy associated with agreeableness and rhythmic entrainment in a spontaneous movement to music task: Preliminary exploratory investigations. Musicae Scientiae, 1029864917701536.

Kohler, N., & Bamford, J. S. (2016). International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus15). Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 26(3), 284.

Books

Burger, B., Bamford, J. S., Carlson, E. (Eds.) (2016). The 9th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology: Programme, Abstracts & Proceedings (SysMus16). Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä. Retrieved from https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/51122

Conference Papers

Bamford, J. S., & Davidson, J. W. (2015). Moving in Character: a pilot study into music, movement and empathy. Presented at the International Conference on the Multimodal Expression of Music (ICMEM), Sheffield, United Kingdom.

Bamford, J. S., Burger, B., & Toiviainen, P. (2015). Synchronisation and interpersonal affiliation in the silent disco. Presented at the 2nd Conference of the Australian Music & Psychology Society (AMPS 2015), Sydney, Australia.

Bamford, J. S., Burger, B., & Toiviainen, P. (2016). Are we dancing to the same beat? Empathy and interpersonal synchronisation in the silent disco. In The 9th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology: Programme, Abstracts & Proceedings (SysMus16). Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä.

Bamford, J. S. (2016). Dancing to the beat of another: An exploration of empathy and entrainment on the social dance floor. Presented at Making Time in Music, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Wen, O., Bamford, J. S., Burger, B., Zayas, V., & Toiviainen, P. (2017). Music-induced synchrony and social affiliation in tango. To be presented at the European Society of the Cognitive Sciences of Music 25th Anniversary Conference (ESCOM 2017), Ghent, Belgium.

Bamford, J. S. (2017). Chance music best not left to chance. To be presented at the International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus17), London, United Kingdom.


Full list available on ResearchGate.