Benjamin Hansberry, Ph.D.

Benjamin Hansberry, Ph.D.

Associate Director for Graduate Student Teaching

Benjamin Hansberry, Ph.D., joined the Teaching + Learning Lab in October 2018.

He directs the Teaching Development Fellows Network, teaches in and coordinates the Kaufman Teaching Certificate Program, and designs and facilitates other teaching development workshops and programming aimed at advancing graduate-student teaching at MIT and preparing graduate students and postdocs for academic careers as teachers.

Before coming to MIT, Ben worked at the Columbia Center for Teaching Learning for three years as a graduate fellow where he designed and facilitated workshops and other programming for the music department and facilitated University-wide programming. He has taught music theory, history, and appreciation at Bates College, Columbia University, Fordham University, Mannes Conservatory, and NYU.

Ben holds a Ph.D. in Music Theory from Columbia University and Bachelor’s degrees in Music and Philosophy from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. His music research explores how conceptualization of music informs analysis and criticism, how to understand and adjudicate analytical disagreements, and how music theorists engage musical experience in and through formal analyses. Ben’s research is highly interdisciplinary drawing on musicology and theory, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.