Karen’s research interests include:
Musical identity, particularly the musical identity of teachers.
Wellbeing through music interventions.
Qualitative research methods, particularly case studies and narrative enquiry as a research method
Karen recently completed her MA in Education achieving a disctinction with her final year dissertation entitled “The musical identities of early childhood music specialists: An exploration of the contributory factors and how these identities relate to practice.”
Karen presented her research project “How does singing in a mother and child choir affect wellbeing, parenting and vocal interactions?” at MERYC UK in 2016.
In 2017 Karen presented her research into ‘Maternal Wellbeing Through Singing’ at Cambridge University as part of the bi-annual European Conference for Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children. She also be presented her work on Musical Identities of Early Childhood Music Specialists as part of a symposium. The proceedings were be published in June 2017.