Dr Kelly Jakubowski

Contact Dr Kelly Jakubowski (email at kelly.jakubowski@durham.ac.uk)

Kelly Jakubowski is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow undertaking a project entitled ‘Prevalence, features, and retrieval of music-evoked autobiographical memories’. This research employs multiple methodologies for collecting a large and diverse dataset of lifetime memories triggered by listening to music, with the aims of gaining a more systematic understanding of the conditions under which these memories occur and expanding theoretical accounts of the interactions between music, memory, and emotions.

Kelly studied Music Performance (violin) and Music Theory for her undergraduate (Baldwin Wallace University, USA) and Masters degrees (Ohio State University, USA). She then pursued an MSc and PhD in music psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her PhD research (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) focused on developing new behavioural and computational methods for studying musical imagery and involuntary memory for music (including the phenomenon of having an “earworm”, or tune stuck in one’s head). She has also published research on absolute pitch, memory for musical pitch and tempo, and musical synchronisation and entrainment. In 2015, she was awarded the Hickman Early Career Researcher Award for her PhD research on temporal aspects of involuntary musical imagery, which included a plenary session talk at the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM) conference in Manchester, UK.

Previous academic posts include Postdoctoral Research Associate in Music at Durham (AHRC-funded ‘Interpersonal Entrainment in Music Performance’ project), Teaching Fellow in Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Visiting Lecturer in Music at King’s College London.

Research Interests

• Music and memory
• Musical imagery
• Musical timing, rhythm, and movement
• Absolute pitch
• Cross-cultural music research

Selected Publications

Chapter in book

• Jakubowski, K. (2020). Musical Imagery. In The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination. Abraham, A. Cambridge University Press. 187-206.
• Frieler, K., Jakubowski, K. & Mullensiefen, D. (2015). Is it the song and not the singer? Hit song prediction using structural features of melodies. In Yearbook of Music Psychology (Jahrbuch Musikpsychologie). Auhagen, W., Bullerjahn, C. & von Georgi, R. Hogrefe. 25.
• Williamson, V.J. & Jakubowski, K. (2014). Earworms. In Music in the Social and Behavioural Sciences. Thompson, W.F. Los Angeles: Sage.

Journal Article

• Liikkanen, L.A. & Jakubowski, K. (2020). Involuntary musical imagery as a component of ordinary music cognition: A review of empirical evidence. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
• Jakubowski, K., Eerola, T., Blackwood Ximenes, A., Ma, W.K., Clayton, M. & Keller, P.E. (2020). Multimodal perception of interpersonal synchrony: Evidence from global and continuous ratings of improvised musical duo performances. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain
• Akkermans, Jessica, Schapiro, Renee, Müllensiefen, Daniel, Jakubowski, Kelly, Shanahan, Daniel, Baker, David, Busch, Veronika, Lothwesen, Kai, Elvers, Paul, Fischinger, Timo, Schlemmer, Kathrin & Frieler, Klaus (2019). Decoding emotions in expressive music performances: A multi-lab replication and extension study. Cognition and Emotion 33(6): 1099-1118.
• Clayton, Martin, Jakubowski, Kelly & Eerola, Tuomas (2019). Interpersonal entrainment in Indian instrumental music performance: Synchronization and movement coordination relate to tempo, dynamics, metrical and cadential structure. Musicae Scientiae 23(3): 304-331.
• Clayton, Martin, Jakubowski, Kelly, Eerola, Tuomas, Keller, Peter E., Camurri, Antonio, Volpe, Gualtiero & Alborno, Paolo (2019). Interpersonal entrainment in music performance: Theory and method. Music Perception
• Jakubowski, Kelly & Ghosh, Anita (2019). Music-evoked autobiographical memories in everyday life. Psychology of Music 030573561988880.
• Jakubowski, Kelly (2018). Commentary on Gruhn et al.'s "How Stable is Pitch Labeling Accuracy in Absolute Pitch Possessors?". Empirical musicology review 13(3-4): 128.
• Heaton, Pamela, Tsang, Wai Fung, Jakubowski, Kelly, Mullensiefen, Daniel & Allen, Rory (2018). Discriminating autism and language impairment and specific language impairment through acuity of musical imagery. Research in Developmental Disabilities 80: 52-63.
• Jakubowski, Kelly, Bashir, Zaariyah, Farrugia, Nicolas & Stewart, Lauren (2018). Involuntary and voluntary recall of musical memories: A comparison of temporal accuracy and emotional responses. Memory & Cognition 46(5): 741-756.
• Eerola, T., Jakubowski, K., Moran, N., Keller, P. & Clayton, M. (2018). Shared Periodic Performer Movements Coordinate Interactions in Duo Improvisations. Royal Society Open Science 5(2): 171520.
• Jakubowski, Kelly, Eerola, Tuomas, Alborno, Paolo, Volpe, Gualtiero, Camurri, Antonio & Clayton, Martin (2017). Extracting Coarse Body Movements from Video in Music Performance: A Comparison of Automated Computer Vision Techniques with Motion Capture Data. Frontiers in Digital Humanities, section Digital Musicology 4: 9.
• Jakubowski, K., Mullensiefen, D. & Stewart, L. (2016). A development study of latent absolute pitch memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 434-443.
• Jakubowski, K., Finkel, S., Stewart, L. & Müllensiefen, D. (2016). Dissecting an earworm: Melodic features and song popularity predict involuntary musical imagery. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts
• Jakubowski, K., Farrugia, N. & Stewart, L. (2016). Probing imagined tempo for music: Effects of motor engagement and musical experience. Psychology of Music 44(6): 1274-1288.
• Liikkanen, L.A., Jakubowski, K. & Toivanen, J (2015). Catching earworms on Twitter: Using big data to study involuntary imagery. Music Perception 33(2): 199-216.
• Jakubowski, K., Halpern, A.R., Grierson, M. & Stewart, L. (2015). The effect on exercise-induced arousal on preferred tempo for familiar melodies. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 22(2): 559-565.
• Jakubowski, Kelly, Farrugia, N., Halpern, A.R., Sankarpandi, S.K. & Stewart, L. (2015). The speed of our mental soundtracks: Tracking the tempo of involuntary musical imagery in everyday life. Memory & Cognition 43(8): 1229-1242.
• Farrugia, N., Jakubowski, Kelly, Cusack, R. & Stewart, L. (2015). Tunes stuck in your brain: The frequency and affective evaluation of involuntary musical imagery correlate with cortical structure. Consciousness & Cognition 35: 66-77.
• Williamson, V.J., Liikkanen, L.A., Jakubowski, Kelly & Stewart, L. (2014). Sticky tunes: How do people react to involuntary musical imagery?. PLOS ONE 9(1): e86170.
• Frieler, K., Fischinger, T., Schlemmer, K., Lothwesen, K., Jakubowski, K. & Mullensiefen, D. (2013). Absolute memory for pitch: A comparative replication of Levitin's 1994 study in six European labs. Musicae Scientiae 17(3): 334-349.
• Frieler, K, Mullensiefen, D, Fischinger, T, Schlemmer, K, Jakubowski, K. & Lothwesen, K (2013). Replication in music psychology. Musicae Scientiae 17(3): 265-276.
• Jakubowski, K. & Mullensiefen, D. (2013). The influence of music-elicited emotions and relative pitch on absolute pitch memory for familiar melodies. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 66(7): 1259-1267.

Show all publications