Professor John Sloboda is Research Professor at the Guildhall School, where he directs its Understanding Audiences research programme. He is also Emeritus Professor at Keele and was a staff member of the School of Psychology at Keele from 1974-2008, where he was Director of its Unit for the Study of Musical Skill and Development, founded in 1991.

John is internationally known for his work on the psychology of music. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and has been President of both the Psychology and General Sections of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, where he has served on the editorial board of its journal Musicae Scientiae. He is a member of the Society for Education and Music Psychology Research, and was Editor-in-Chief of its journal Psychology of Music from 1985-1989.

He was the recipient of the 1998 British Psychological Society’s Presidents Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge, and in 2004 he was elected to Fellowship of the British Academy. At present he is the first and only Fellow working in the UK conservatoire sector. In 2018, he was awarded an OBE for his services to psychology and music.

John has been Honorary Consultant to the AHRC Centre for Music Performance as Creative Practice, a network participant in Theatrum Mundi and a contributing researcher to the AHRC Knowledge Exchange Hub Creativeworks London. He was also a member of the Senior Management Group of the think-tank Oxford Research Group and co-founder of the Iraq Body Count Project, in which he retains active ongoing engagement, as well as co-directing the charity Every Casualty Worldwide.

His books include Handbook of Music and Emotion (co-edited with Patrik Juslin), and Exploring the Musical Mind, both published by Oxford University Press.