Dr Kathleen Turner is a singer songwriter, community musician and arts practice researcher at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, with a specific interest in autoethnography and narrative inquiry. Kathleen is the Course Director for the MA Community Music and contributes to a number of other undergraduate and post-graduate programmes at the Academy. Kathleen is also currently co-supervising three doctoral candidates in community music and autoethnographic research in the areas of singing and addiction recovery, songwriting practice, and representations of young people’s experience in Ireland’s youth orchestras.

Since 2020, Kathleen has collaborated with colleagues Dr Alicia De Banffy Hall (Project Lead), Prof. Lee Willingham, and Prof. Lee Higgins in the development of an online resource for students, educators and practitioners in the field titled Community Music Learning. She also collaborated with colleagues, Dr Helen Phelan (University of Limerick), Dr Naomi Sunderland and Dr Alexis Kallio (Griffith University, Brisbane) in the development of an online series of seminars titled ‘Play On.’ This curated series welcomed guests working in socially engaged creative arts research, to tackle issues such as environmental sustainability, practitioner well-being, and sustainable community partnerships.

As the recipient of the Jerome Hynes Fellowship (2017-18) supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Kathleen was a fellow on the prestigious Clore Leadership Programme. She recently completed a six year term on the international commissioning team for Community Music Activity (CMA), a special interest group within the International Society for Music Education (ISME). With the team, Kathleen co-developed three international conferences for CMA, online in 2020 and 2022 (Co-Chair) and at University of Tampere, Finland in 2024. This role also involved chairing multiple research presentations at ISME’s main conferences. Kathleen is also on the editorial board for the International Journal of Community Music.

Kathleen is an experienced singer songwriter and has a number of successful releases including her 2019 debut album, Like a Lion, and her 2017 EP, The Lines Between Us, produced by renowned folk artist, Chris Wood. Turner is also a well-respected community choral leader, and in 2019 received the President’s award for Excellence in Leadership at the University of Limerick. She was the founding director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s flagship children’s programme, Sing Out with Strings. Kathleen has directed a number of significant performances, including a specially composed community piece for the Dalai Lama on his visit to Ireland in 2011. She is the founding director of Nasc Choir and the former director of the Limerick and University of Limerick Gospel Choirs.