JUSTIN LONDON is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, Cognitive Science, and the Humanities at Carleton College. He teaches courses in Music Theory, The Philosophy of Music, Music Psychology, Cognitive Science, and American Popular Music. He received his BM degree in Classical Guitar and his MM degree in Music Theory from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and he holds a PhD in Music History and Theory from the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with Leonard Meyer.
Professor London’s research interests include rhythm and meter, music perception and cognition, and musical aesthetics. His book Hearing in Time (Oxford University Press, 2004, 2nd edition 2012) is a cross-cultural exploration of the perception and cognition of musical meter. He is currently involved in several joint research projects: dance and drumming coordination in Malian Jembe music (with Rainer Polak, the University of Oslo, and Nori Jacoby, Cornell University), tempo perception (with Petri Toiviainen, and Marc Thompson, the University of Jyväskylä, Finland), and how the microstructure of musical sounds affects their rhythmic properties (with Anne Danielsen and Guilherme Schmidt Câmara, the University of Oslo).
Professor London has held two Fulbright Fellowships, the first in 2005–2006 at the Centre for Music and Science of the University of Cambridge, and the second at the Finnish Center of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä in 2014. In 2016 and 2023 he was Visiting Professor of Musicology at the University of Oslo. He served as President of the Society for Music Theory in 2007–2009, and served as President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition in 2016–2018. In 2022 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Music Perception and Cognition.