DrPatrick Savage
Senior Research Fellow
Psychology
- Senior Research FellowPsychology
- +64 (0)21 672 013 (Mobile)
- SCIENCE CENTRE 302 - Bldg 302, 23 SYMONDS ST, AUCKLAND CENTRAL, AUCKLAND, 1010, New Zealand
BIO
I am the Director of the CompMusic Lab for comparative and computational musicology, author of "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (Oxford University Press, 2026), and host of "Many Voices: A world music podcast". We aim to use inclusive cross-cultural collaborative research to understand how and why we humans universally make and value music in such diverse ways. I began the lab in 2018 at Keio University in Japan, and in 2023 I moved back to Aotearoa New Zealand to take up a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and Marsden grant to study cross-cultural relationships between music and language (keeping a cross-appointment at Keio).
NB: I am currently unable to accept new graduate students to the lab other than in exceptional circumstances until October 2028 (when I return to my full-time position at Keio University after my 5-year Rutherford Discovery Fellowship).
Selected distinctions/honours:
2025 Early Career Research Excellence Award for Humanities (Royal Society Te Apārangi)
2023-2028 Rutherford Discovery Fellow (Royal Society Te Apārangi)
2023 Inaugural Rising Star (Human Behavior and Evolution Society)
2022 Inaugural Early Career Award (Society for Music Perception and Cognition)
2022 Young Scientists’ Prize (Japanese Minister for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology)
2022 Rising Star (Association for Psychological Science)
2020 Best Application paper award (International Society for Music Information Retrieval)
2017 Ikushi Prize (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2017 Hirayama Ikuo Arts and Culture Prize (Tokyo University of the Arts)
Selected media coverage (links at bottom left of this page):
New York Times: "Why do people make music?"
Undark: "Including globally diverse groups improves music research"
Discover: "Music and mutations could be linked"
New York Times: "The unfinished work of Alan Lomax’s Global Jukebox"
Radio New Zealand: "How AI can help spot music plagiarism"
Royal Society Te Apārangi: "2025 Research Excellence Award for Humanities: Music can bond us together better than language, new research finds"
UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND APPOINTMENTS
- Senior Research FellowFaculty of Science, Psychology, New Zealand
MEDIA
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
- Associate ProfessorKeio University, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Japan2018 - present
- Postdoctoral ResearcherUniversity of Oxford, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford, United Kingdom2017 - 2018
NON-ACADEMIC POSITIONS
- Recommender [equivalent to journal Associate Editor]Peer Community In Registered Reports2023 - present
- Advisory Board MemberAssociation for Cultural Equity2019 - present
- Editorial Board MemberEmpirical Musicology Review2020 - present
- Editorial Board MemberMusic & Science, UK2024 - present
DEGREES
- PhD (Ethnomusicology)Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan2017
- MA (Ethnomusicology)Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan2014
- MSc (Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour)McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada2011
- BA summa cum laude (Music composition)Amherst College, USA2007
LANGUAGES
- JapaneseCan read, write, speak, understand and peer review
- EnglishCan read, write, speak, understand and peer review
FACULTY / INSTITUTE
- Science
GRADUATE SUPERVISION
- PhD/Doctoral Accredited Supervisor
MEDIA ENQUIRIES
- Available for media enquiries