Crossing the Boundary: From Experimental Psychology to Ethnomusicology

In attempting to understand the difficulties raised by Judith Becker’s experiences with crossing boundaries between disciplines, the author is prompted to examine how he successfully negotiated the intellectual journey from psychology to musicology in the course of his academic career. Apart from taking advantage of unique opportunities offered, and fortuitous developments in the field of music cognition, he attributes his success to having doctoral degrees in both psychology and musicology, the second the result of being awarded a Social Science Research Council Conversion Fellowship in 1975 specifically intended to train natural scientists to become social scientists. Thanks are offered to the SSRC committee that took the decision to establish this training scheme.