Education

BMus, BEd, MEd (Queen’s), PhD (York)

Biography

Sherry Johnson is a step dancer, fiddler, choreographer, educator and researcher. She is interested in the interrelationships between music and dance in a wide variety of contexts, as well as gender in performance and issues of globalization and technology in relation to vernacular music and dance. She is currently working on a SSHRC-funded project that examines the links between step dancing in various regions in Canada with its antecedents in Britain and Ireland.  Her writing has been published in the Canadian Journal for Traditional Music, American Anthropologist, Ethnologies, Ethnomusicology, and the British Journal of Music Education.

Professor Johnson recently produced Bellows and Bows: Historic Recordings of Traditional Fiddle and Accordion Music Across Canada, a double CD compilation of distinguished fiddlers and accordion players from a wide variety of ethnocultural communities across Canada.  The accompanying 156-page book includes overviews of the social and historical contexts for the music in different regions, detailed maps, tune notes, musician biographies, and archival photographs.

Dr. Johnson is an active member of numerous scholarly societies that support her research in ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology, including the Society for Ethnomusicology, International Council for Traditional Music, and the Study Group for Ethnochoreology.  She is a past-president of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music.

Professor Johnson joined the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University in 2007. Previously she taught courses in music, dance, music education and anthropology at York, University of Toronto, Ryerson University and Nipissing University.