Benjamin Hansberry (PhD '17) is the Associate Director for Graduate Student Teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Teaching + Learning Lab. 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 programs aimed at advancing graduate-student teaching at MIT and preparing graduate students and postdocs for academic careers as teachers.

Ben was previously Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bates College and has also taught music history and music theory at Columbia University, Fordham University, Mannes Conservatory, and NYU. While completing his PhD at Columbia, he also worked for three years as a graduate fellow in the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning where he designed and facilitated workshops and other programming for the music department and facilitated University-wide programming.

Ben holds a PhD in Music Theory from Columbia University and Bachelor’s degrees in Music and Philosophy from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. His research explores how conceptualization of music informs approaches to analysis and criticism, how to interpret and adjudicate music-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. He has presented at regional, national, and international conferences including the Society for Music Theory and has been published in Music Theory Spectrum, Current Musicology, and Notes.