NEC Vocal Pedagogy Director Dr. Ian Howell ‘16 DMA Wins Van Lawrence Fellowship

Congratulations to Dr. Ian Howell ‘16 DMA, Voice Faculty and Vocal Pedagogy Director at NEC, for his achievement in winning the 2022 Van Lawrence Fellowship, an international award for interdisciplinary work in voice science and applied voice. Jointly given by the Voice Foundation and National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), the award includes financial compensation and opportunities to further research in this area.

Dr. Howell discusses his winning research project, which was developed while working with vocal students at NEC:

“The winning project started from surprising observations we made in student projects in the NEC Voice and Sound Analysis Lab over the past several years. Last spring (despite the pandemic which forced us to use remote technology to collaborate), one of our GD students further explored these ideas. This provided a large data set for analysis.

In simple terms, this project questions whether the cis female voice can be understood in terms of behaviors that we’d expect from the more thoroughly explored cis male classical singing voice. This is a major problem in modern voice pedagogy, and risks excluding the singing experience of half of our population. This is the kind of project that could only have happened in a conservatory dedicated to interdisciplinary work and to stretching the perspectives and experiences of its students.”

Learn more about Dr. Howell’s research at the Van Lawrence Fellowship website.