Skip to main content

Staff profile

Overview

Nao Toyama

Biography

Nao Toyama is a PhD student at Durham University researching Music & Thoughts, focusing on listeners’ time-varying mental activity and listening mode in classical music concert settings. She is planning to collect mixed-methods data in live classical concerts and compare these responses to other listening formats (e.g., recorded versions of the same performance, individual listening).

Nao obtained a Master of Arts degree in Musicology from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2024 and a Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours in Musicology from Toho Gakuen School of Music (Tokyo, Japan) in 2023. For her Bachelor's she worked on Western classical music history, aesthetics and philosophy, and completed a research project on an Italian avant-garde movement, Futurism, considering the relationship with its period and locality. In her Master’s project, she surveyed behavioural motivation for attending live music performances through collecting self-reports from concert attenders.

She is currently working with Prof. Kelly Jakubowski and Prof. Tuomas Eerola for her PhD (2025-).Nao is an active member of Durham's Music Psychology Lab. She is a course representative for Music PhD students at Durham (2025-). Alongside her PhD research work, Nao also teaches piano. She is a trained classical pianist and obtained her Hight School Diploma in Piano performance in Japan.

Nao is an active member of Durham's Music Psychology Lab. She is a course representative for Music PhD students at Durham (2025-). Alongside her PhD research work, Nao also teaches piano. She is a trained classical pianist and obtained her Hight School Diploma in Piano performance in Japan. 

Research Interests
  • Music and thoughts 
  • Audience experience at live performance 
  • Time-varying musical parameters 
  • Environment factors/concert settings 
Conferences
  • SEMPRE PGR/ECR Conference in Cambridge (April 2026)

Research interests

  • Music and thoughts
  • Audience experience at live performance
  • Time-varying musical parameters
  • Environment factors/concert settings