Dr. Jeska Buhmann is working as a postdoctoral researcher at IPEM. She has a background in speech technology and obtained a PhD in musicology from IPEM. From 2013 onwards her research focused on the influence of music on walking or running movements. She studies the sonic characteristics in music that cause people to move with more vigour, resulting in larger step sizes and/or speed. In addition, her focus has been on the use of music technology to manipulate music in order to spontaneously influence people’s running behaviour and on music selection. The work was part of the European BeatHealth project, a collaborative project co-funded by the European Union under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). In this project the pervasive link between (musical) rhythm and movement was exploited for boosting motor performance. She published several papers and co-authored a book chapter on these topics.
Currently she manages a series of new experiments on the topic of identifying and being able to induce an optimal feeling of interaction (through auditory feedback) in a musical interaction task between several people.
