Alexandrea M Jonker
Assistant Professor: Music Theory
Alexandrea Jonker received a PhD in Music Theory (2024) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Originally a native of Ontario, Canada, she received a Bachelor of Music in Music Theory (2016) from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, before going on to complete a Master of Music in Music Theory at Michigan State University (2018). Her main research interests are in inclusive aural skills pedagogy and the music of women ultramodernist composers, specifically Vivian Fine and Johanna Beyer. Alexandrea's dissertation was the first large-scale study of Johanna Beyer's music to date, proposing an analytical methodology that intertwines aspects of transformational theory and queer theory to understand Beyer's four earliest compositions. Her doctoral research was funded by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Alexandrea has presented research at the Society for Music Theory annual meeting, Pedagogy into Practice, the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, the International Music by Women Festival in Columbus, Mississippi, as well as several regional and graduate student conferences around North America. Her research has been published in the conference proceedings from the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, and the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy. Alexandrea is a two-time winner of the Innovative Teaching and Learning in Music Award at McGill University, and was nominated for a McGill Equity Award for the 2022-2023 school year. Her work on "blind hearing" in the aural skills classroom was recognized with a Best Student Paper award from the Rocky Mountain Society for Music Theory (2021) and the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic (2021).