Welcome to my website at the University of Iceland
Dr. Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir
Prófessor / Professor in Music Education
Umsjón með kjörsviðinu Tónmennt í Faggreinadeild
Varadeildarforseti Faggreinadeildar 2019-2020
Menntavísindasviði, Háskóla Íslands
School of Education, University of Iceland
Contact: helgarut@hi.is
About Helga
Dr. Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir is Professor of Music Education at the University of Iceland, School of Education. She teaches music pedagogy for elementary and middle school as well as courses in early childhood music methods. Her research focuses on musical development in children. She is a board member of the MERYC (European Network for Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children) since 2015 and on the steering committee for the international research project AIRS (Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing) since 2012.
Currently she is lead co-editor for the Routledge Companion on Singing and Education to be published by Routledge in 2019. The Routledge Companion on Singing will be published in three volumes: I Singing and development, II Singing and Education and III Singing and Well-being. The project chief editor for all three volumes is Prof. Annabel Cohen.
Helga has developed her own practice “Tonagull” in early childhood music in Iceland, she runs music courses for families with young children in Iceland since 2004 and published in 2015 an illustrated book of Icelandic songs and rhymes with audio recordings. Tonagull is a research-based practice that gives courses, trains teachers and develops material for teaching music in childhood. Helga is a pioneer for public participatory concerts for families with young children. Through Tonagull, Helga has managed subsidised concerts open to families for free, using both traditional concert venues and other public venues such as museums in connection with family- and children’s festivals in Reykjavik.
Helga’s scholarly work is published in peer reviewed international music journals and with international publishers such as Studentlitteratur, Routledge and Oxford University Press.