CONFERENCE REPORT Report of the International Summer School of Musical Understanding. Philosophical, Psychological, and Neuroscientific Approaches (University of Sheffield, July 8 –11, 2013) Andrea Schiavio, Stephanie Bramley, Theresa Veltri, Julian Cespedes-Guevara, and Yuko Arthurs University of Sheffield The International Summer School on Musical Understanding (ISSMU) was held for three and half days, July 8 to 11, 2013, at the Department of Music of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. Twenty-five postgraduate students from academic or research institutions from 15 countries participated in ISSMU. The authors (doctoral-level students at the University of Sheffield) initiated and organized ISSMU in association with the research center “Music Mind Machine in Sheffield.” Two academics from the University of Sheffield—Renee Timmers and Nicola Dibben—were academic advisers. The main focus of ISSMU was to investigate musical understanding from philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives within related methodological and theoretical frameworks. Both the aca- demic advisors and the invited speakers—Corrado Sinigaglia (University of Milan, Department of Philosophy), Tuomas Eerola (University of Jyväskylä, Department of Music), and Katie Overy (Uni- versity of Edinburgh, Department of Music)— gave presentations and organized workshops to stimulate discussion for group work sessions. In the group work, attendees designed an empirical experiment and presented their findings via oral presentations. In this report, we (i) state the aims and the objectives of ISSMU, (ii) describe its structure and organization, (iii) summarize the main outcomes, (iv) analyze attendees’ feedback, and (v) discuss possible future perspectives. Keywords: Summer School, musical understanding, mirror neurons, music and emotion, interdisciplin- arity An Interdisciplinary Approach to Musical Understanding: Aims of ISSMU Music research is at the crossroads between different disci- plines. Within this rubric, areas such as historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music composition, or psychology of music display an interesting overlap with fields like history, anthropol- ogy, computer science, and cognitive neuroscience. The main aim of International Summer School on Musical Understanding (ISSMU) was to openly face the challenges of the interplay be- tween different areas of study. ISSMU offered attendees an infor- mal setting in which they could collaborate with people from different disciplinary backgrounds and leading academics to de- bate complex questions such as— • Which phenomenological experiences are connected to musi- cal engagement and how do these experiences vary with back- ground and listening context? • Which faculties underlie musical understanding and how are these reflected in neuroscientific and psychological findings? • What is the role of the body for musical comprehension? • To what extent do emotions shape our understanding of music? Other goals of ISSMU were— • To enable attendees to become more familiar with current research, as well as research in progress; • To encourage the development of useful research skills; • To promote the creation of a network of research students, whose collaboration will help to strengthen and invigorate the field of Music Psychology. Structure of the ISSMU Twenty-five postgraduate students from a number of interna- tional institutions 1 and with a great diversity of backgrounds participated in ISSMU. The Summer School consisted of lectures, workshops, and group work. On the first day a poster session was organized where attendees disseminated their research. Invited speakers and academic advisors gave lectures relating to musical 1 Participants came from United Kingdom, Italy, USA, Japan, Denmark, Finand, France, Poland, Spain, Greece, Germany, The Netherlands, Swit- zerland, Mexico, and Colombia. Andrea Schiavio, Stephanie Bramley, Theresa Veltri, Julian Cespedes- Guevara, and Yuko Arthurs, Department of Music, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Andrea Schiavio, “Music Mind Machine in Sheffield” Research Centre, Depart- ment of Music, the University of Sheffield, 34 Leavygreave Road, Shef- field S3 7RD, the United Kingdom. E-mail: a.schiavio@sheffield.ac.uk This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain © 2014 American Psychological Association 2014, Vol. 24, No. 1, 109 –113 0275-3987/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/pmu0000035 109