I am writing to share the recipients of ASME’s major awards for 2025. This includes two Honorary Life Memberships, the Teaching Award for Excellence in Indigenous Music Education, and the Callaway Doctoral Award. These awardees are in addition to the previously announced winners of the inaugural ASME National Teaching awards
Teaching Award for Excellence in Indigenous Music Education
This Award aims to recognise music educators in First Nation and Indigenous Community settings through their exceptional efforts in the provision of quality music education. The award seeks to enable further professional growth through attendance at the ASME National Conference where there will be opportunities to share their experiences and to access current thinking, professional practice, and resources.
The recipient of this award is Jessie Lloyd.
Jessie Lloyd is an Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Songwoman and cultural historian and the founder of the award-winning work Mission Songs Project. As a cultural ambassador, Jessie continues the songlines of Aboriginal Australian, a body of traditional songs that carry the 65,000-year history of the world’s oldest living culture. Her latest project, Jessie’s Classroom is an Indigenous-owned and Indigenous-created resource, designed to support Australian teachers in sharing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture with respect, confidence, and joy.
Jessie will be presenting at the conference on Saturday, and her award will be presented then.
Callaway Doctoral Award
The award is based on the contribution made by a doctoral thesis to furthering theoretical, empirical, historical and/or methodological knowledge in and about music education. In particular, the ability of a doctoral thesis to make conceptual advances in music education theory, policy and practice, to indicate methods for improvement of music education, to assess the significance and viability of innovation in music education, or to contribute to the advances in methodology for research in music education will be assessed as criteria for the award.
In 2025, the Callaway Doctoral Award recipient is Dr Brad Fuller.
Brad is a music educator and researcher with a focus on critical pedagogy, policy analysis, and praxial approaches to teaching and learning in music. He has extensive experience in school music education, teacher professional learning, and curriculum design. His research interrogates the impact of neoliberalism on education, offering reflective and relational alternatives to evidence-based practice framed by narrow, managerialist logics. Dr Fuller completed his doctoral thesis, Riding the Wonky Donkey of Evidence-Based Practice: Resisting the Neoliberalisation of Education Through Active Work in the Music Classroom, at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, in 2023.
Brad is unable to attend the conference, but will be presented with his award in the near future.
Honorary Life
Honorary Life Membership is reserved as an honour, bestowed by ASME, in recognition of an individual’s outstanding contribution to music education. It is ASME’s highest accolade.
Professor Emeritus Kathryn Marsh
Professor Marsh’s work with and support of ASME over many decades includes Research Officer, 2000-2006, Executive Member, 1998-2002, Member, Conference Organising Committee, 1998-1999 and ongoing attendance of the national conferences supporting her graduate students. Reflecting her interdisciplinary background in ethnomusicology and music education, Professor Kathryn Marsh’s research interests include children’s musical play and creativity, primary and elementary music education, cultural diversity in music education, the influence of the media on children’s learning and creation of music and the role of music in the lives of refugee and immigrant children. She has written numerous scholarly and professional publications, is regularly invited to present the results of her research internationally and has been a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford, University of London and University of Washington.
Kathy’s award will be presented at the conference.
Professor Margaret Barrett
Professor Barrett is Distinguished Professor and Head of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University. Among her many achievements Professor Barrett was awarded a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in 2018 to investigate children’s singing and song-making in the archives of the Smithsonian Institute, and the Library of Congress (Washington DC) and was elected Beaufort Visiting Research Fellow at St John’s College University of Cambridge in 2019. She has held a research residency funded by the Foundation de Maison des Sciences de l’Homme at IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics /Musique) investigating creative pedagogy and transmission practices (2019) and the Albi Rosenthal Fellowship in Music at the Bodleian Library. She was awarded the Fellowship of the Australian Society for Music Education in 2011 and Honorary Life Membership of the International Society for Music Education in 2022.
Margaret’s award was presented at the recent Asia-Pacific Symposium for Music Education Research in Perth.
