Marie McCarthy

Professor of Music Education

---

On Leave: 01/01/2025 - 05/01/2025

Bio

Marie McCarthy is a music educator whose research interests are focused on the influence of sociocultural contexts on the form and impact of music teaching and learning in historical context. Topics that appear in her publications include music education and the formation of cultural identity; historical narratives of music transmission in African American schools and communities; the history of transmission of Irish traditional music; cross-cultural comparison of trends impacting national music education systems historically. Her interests also extend into the area of children’s spiritual development.

She has been on the Music Education faculty at Michigan since 2006. Prior to that, she taught at the University of Maryland for sixteen years. In her early teaching career she was a primary-school teacher in Ireland for ten years. She is a specialist in general music education and has taught courses on music in the elementary and secondary school, learning theories for the music teacher, music cultures in the classroom, and basic and advanced (historical, qualitative) research methods in music education. Over the course of her career, she has received numerous awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship, Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Council for Research in Music Education, honorary life membership of the Society for Music Education in Ireland and the International Society for Music Education, and she was a recipient of the 2022 Senior Researcher Award from the US National Association for Music Education.

Her major publications include two books, Passing It On: The Transmission of Music in Irish Culture, and Toward a Global Community: A History of the International Society for Music Education, 1953-2003. Her most recent scholarship is as co-editor of the major book, Micheál Ó Súilleabháin: A Life in Music (2024). Keynote or featured conference addresses since 2019 were presented at the European Association for Music in Schools, International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education, Mountain Lake Colloquium, National Association for Music Education, and the Society for Music Education in Ireland.

Highlights of her professional service include editor of the State-of-the-Arts Series at the University of Maryland, where she coordinated the publication of the proceedings of the biennial Charles Fowler Colloquium in Arts Education from 1993 to 2003; section editor of the landmark book, New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning (2002); member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Research in Music Education of NAfME; national chair of the History Special Research Interest Group of NAfME; and Editor of the Journal of Historical Research in Music Education since 2015.