Erik Lindström

Education and key qualifications

24/05/2004   PhD-degree

Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Psychology, Uppsala University/ Uppsala/ Sweden

Current position

2015 - 20XX Current Position: SENIOR LECTURER

Faculty of Health and Life Sciences/ Department of Psychology, Linnaeus University/ Kalmar-Växjö/ Sweden

Previous positions

2005 - 2014 Position held: SENIOR LECTURER

Management Department at Blekinge Institute of Technology/ Karlskrona/ Sweden

2014 - 2015 Position held: SENIOR LECTURER

School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University/ Stockholm/ Sweden

Forskning

RESEARCH ACHIEVEMENTS AND PEER RECOGNITION

Research achievements

My Research - a Journey Towards Music Psychology and Information Technology

• 1) My interest in researching emotions began with my undergraduate thesis, "5x Oh My Darling Clementine" (1992), which was an investigation of expressive communication in musicians' performance of a well-known melody. The thesis, along with expanded data, evolved into an early publication (Gabrielsson & Lindström, 1995). The music psychological background and the interest in the cognition and perception of emotions, metaphors, and symbols served as a gateway for my interaction with the external world. Already in 1995, I was asked by Telia Research (Haninge/ Stockholm/ Sweden) to carry out a small research project on how the perception of sound icons in the telephone network can assist users in managing telephone services.

• 2) The project "Expressive Performance in Music, Dance, Speech, and Body Language (1997-2001)," funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and led by Alf Gabrielsson, was an extension of our music studies, aiming to explore both the commonalities and distinctions in the expression of emotions across various forms of expressive communication. My doctoral dissertation and thesis, titled "A Dynamic View of Melodic Organization and Performance: Perception of Structure and Emotional Expression in Music (Lindström, 2004)," delves into the intricate interplay between melodic structure and musical performance, particularly how this interplay influences listeners' emotional perception. One of the key findings of this dissertation is that the accent structure in music, including the apex of the melodic contour, captures the listener's attention at pivotal points, thereby impacting the assessment of emotional expression under specific conditions. These results were published across three papers, all authored solely by me. I defended my doctoral thesis on May 24, 2004

• 3) From 2001 to 2003, I was employed as a research assistant in the EU project "MEGA: Multisensory Expressive Gesture Applications," coordinated by Antonio Camurri (University of Genoa). The project aimed to provide new technology for media and social entertainment. By analyzing and synthesizing music, movement, and video/image in real-time using computers, a dancer could, for example, convey emotional expression in movements into the continuously changing parameters of music. My role in the project was to explore musical parameters underlying the application of computer models and evaluate the usability, attitude, and effectiveness of various public applications and computer applications (Lindström et.al 2005). Moreover, a short-term project employment in 2005 in the EU project "IMUTUS" and collaboration with KTH concluded my project employment in Uppsala-Stockholm. The project, under the coordination of Dr. Spyros Raptis at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (Athens), developed an interactive multimedia tool that provided performance feedback to flute students.

• 4) From 2001 to 2005, I was involved in the Feedback Learning for Musical Expression "FeelMe" project, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond through a grant to Patrik Juslin. The project aimed to find new computer-based teaching methods. With the help of colleagues at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology/Stockholm Sweden, the project developed a user-friendly computer program that could provide feedback to a musician to improve their musical performance to achieve emotional expressions (Juslin et al 2006). Like MEGA, the research continued to focus on musical parameters, the interaction between humans and technology, and the evaluation of the program and its effectiveness. It also explored music students' attitudes toward expressiveness, computer usage, and new teaching methods (Lindström et al., 2003).

• 5) My research area has primarily been within the field of "music psychology," which is a unique interdisciplinary specialty at the Department of Psychology in Uppsala. This field covers various areas of psychology, such as perception, cognition, emotional psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and neuropsychology. My most well-known contributions to the field are the review chapter The role of structure in the musical expression of emotions, in the Handbook of Music and Emotion published by Oxford University Press (Gabrielsson & Lindström, 2010), as well as a research study on the perception of musical parameters published in Music Analysis, Special Issue on Music and Emotion (Juslin & Lindström, 2011) and Emotion in music performance. In S. Hallam, I. Cross, & M. Thaut (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of music psychology (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press (Juslin & Lindström, 2016).

• 6) From 2006 to 2012, I supervised PhD-student, who defended his dissertation in May 2012. He was part of the doctoral program in Industrial Economics at BTH, which also collaborates with the Management and IT (MIT) research school and Linköping University, Sweden. The research focused on the perception of emotions in speech as a basis for decision-making and assessments within emergency-service SOS Alarm AB. Perception of speech is crucial information for the receiving operator and research analyzed acoustic parameters in speech with implications for emotions and decisions (Svensson & Lindström, 2012), and also related to the prioritization and assessment of help needs (Svensson & Lindström, 2013).

• 7) The research and supervision have provided me with extensive experience and insights into ethical considerations. The research activity has undergone thorough ethical review by the regional ethics review board in Lund, Sweden in conjunction with regulations and guidelines within emergency-service SOS Alarm AB.

• 8) I have been employed at the final stages of the three-year project "Paradigm for Selective Activation of Mechanisms in Musical Induction of Emotions 2011-2013," funded by the Swedish Research Council for Patrik Juslin. The project aimed to discover principles regarding psychological mechanisms and develop experimental paradigms to evoke and activate emotions during music listening. The project has significant implications for both basic research on the perception of music and emotions and various practical applications.

• 9) I serve as the secondary supervisor for the research project titled "Choir Singing and Healthy Aging: Efficacy and Underlying Neural Mechanisms." This project is funded through a grant awarded to Laszlo Harmat and is expected to continue until the end of 2025. The primary research question we aim to address is: How does participation in choir singing contribute to the enhancement of emotional well-being, social engagement, and cognitive reserve among elderly individuals living in the community?

Uppdrag

I assumed the role of department head for the Department of Social Sciences at the School of Management (BTH) from the spring of 2010 to 2013.

I took on the role of deputy department head in the Department of Psychology at Linnaeus University from 2016 to 2019.

Additionally, I assumed the position of program director for the clinical psychology program starting in 2018 and continuing onwards.