Research areas include the history of jazz within audiovisual media; the aesthetic boundaries between jazz and/or as popular music; the connection between dominant gender ideologies and modes of musical creativity and performance praxis; the critical role of women in histories and current networks of jazz making and canonization; the incorporation of intersectionality and critical race theories within the analysis of contemporary musical cultures; and most recently, research inspired by both practice-based approaches and ecocriticism including a research project forging connections between local soundscapes, aesthetic communities, and collective musical improvisation for ecological consciousness raising in light of the climate and biodiversity crisis.

Kristin McGee began her position in the School of Music at ANU in 2023 and currently convenes the jazz and contemporary performance program. In 2004, she began the popular music BA program within the Arts, Culture and Media Department at the University of Groningen.

She has also worked as a professional musician and saxophonist in a number of groups in Chicago and Groningen including Los Toallitas, Funkadesi, The Blue Turtle Tea Party, Redmoon Puppet Theatre, The University of Chicago X-Tet, The Northwestern Big Band, the Hericane Saxophone Quartet, and the multi-arts collective Hora Est. In Groningen she led the first student big band from 2013-2017.

She was president of the Benelux chapter of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM Benelux) from 2013-19 and has served on the board of KVNM (The Royal Society for Music History of the Netherlands). She was also co-editor for a special issue on Beyoncé in Popular Music and Society and media editor of Jazz Perspectives. She is also active with the Arts in Society Research Center and the Society for Ethnomusicology.

She completed her Masters in saxophone performance at Northwestern University and her PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago with a Franke dissertation writing Fellowship. She has published on jazz women, audio visual media, and the film and music industries for her book Some Liked it Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928-1959 (Wesleyan University Press 2009), nominated for a TLA Richard Wall Memorial Award recognizing scholarly writing on cinema and recorded performance and the American Musicological Society's Lewis Lockwood Award. Her monograph Remixing European Jazz Culture was published by Routledge in 2020.

Music4Change - Erasmus+ KA220-HED Grant 2022-2025

Music4Change, initiated by the University of Bergen, with several universities and arts organization, explores methods to improve the quality of PhD education in music through innovative interdisciplinary teaching and learning, while researching and providing sustainable development models by focusing on the role of music and the arts. The project will result in a range of open access digital learning resources, including a cross-sector mentorship scheme between students and the arts sector. These learning resources will be part of a new 'Curriculum for Change' for PhD education which will serve as an innovative model in the arts nationally and across Europe. M4C has two horizontal priorities i) digital transformation and readiness, and ii) inclusion and diversity in education. The project will lead to several publications on the four pillars, a website with resources for PhD students and scholars, accessible digital tools such as tutorials, and online learning modules.

Listen Here Now! A Participatory Soundscape Approach to Biodiversity and Well-being in the City (2022/23)

This project studies soundscapes in an interdisciplinary context to assess how transformations of the urban environment and upon the urban forest impact both humans and non-humans through attention to the sonic. Given the challenges presented by urbanization, this study develops interdisciplinary frameworks to measure soundscapes in relation to three inter-related criteria: biodiversity, place attachment, and environmental well-being. This one-year project is further designed to explore new interdisciplinary methods in a participatory process with students from various faculties and with local citizens through citizen science approaches. Our backgrounds in the fields of acoustics, spatial planning, cultural geography, urban heritage, ecology, and music performance enable us to combine different approaches for the common objective of raising ecological awareness of biodiversity, increasing well-being and attachment to place, and working to develop urban policy to stimulate sonically healthy, biodiverse cities.

VOW: Voices of Women Erasmus+ Grant 2021-2024

This project develops new research and educational tools to contribute to the familiarization of higher education students, music scholars, arts audiences, and the general public, with musical works created by women. The higher education contextualization of this objective will be achieved by focusing on the Voices of Women repertory, its performance, its analysis, and related research and dissemination initiatives in the involved institutions. VOW is aimed at a deeper level of inclusivity of all voices as equal contributors to the artistic canon. The second aim is establishing an international VOW network and corresponding “Roadmap for the promotion of Voices of Women.” 

During the research period, a series of training workshops, concerts, symposiums, and digital materials are organized, created, and disseminated to create greater exposure for women's compositions and artistic voices. In November, we organized the Voices of Women in Music Conference with a series of workshops, lectures, concerts and master classes for musicians. We focus upon MA educational programs to offer new methods for researching women's biographies and cultural contributions such as ‘rescaping’ and practice based research.

Gender Dynamics in the Dutch Music Industry - KIEM NWO Internationalization Grant 2018/2019

This research investigates the value of creative professionals in the ecosystem of the music industry’s labor market. By unravelling the cultural and societal practices, dominant discourses, exclusion mechanisms, specific employment requirements, and psychological barriers leading to the perpetuation of the gender gap in various stages and within different forms, this research re-conceptualized the value of the creative professional by acknowledging the talents of women in this industry and optimizing the talents of workers of all genders.

This consortium represented partners exhibiting extensive academic expertise on gender research in music with over a decade work experience in different fields of the music business within various musical genres. The private partners offered an insider’s perspective in an academic context and a unique access to the professionals of the music industry.

Beyoncé in the World - Beyoncé Studies project (2017-2021)

This project was initiated by Christina Baade (Department of Communications at MacMaster University) and myself in 2017 after a panel on Beyoncé at the Feminist Theory in Music confernece in Madison, Wisconsin in the USA.  From this inspriring group of talks, we initiated a special issure for the Journal of Popular Music and Society and eventual a full-lenth manuscript for Wesleyan Univeristy Press (Beyoncé in the World: Making Meaning with Queen Bey in Troubled Times, 2019). This book brought together new work from sixteen international scholars to explore Beyoncé's impact as an artist and public figure from the perspectives of critical race studies, gender and women's studies, queer and cultural studies, music, and fan studies. The authors explore Beyoncé's musical persona as one that builds upon the lineages of Black female cool, Black southern culture, and Black feminist cultural production. They explore Beyoncé's reception within and beyond North America, including how a range of performers—from YouTube gospel singers to Brazilian pop artists have drawn inspiration from her performances and image. The authors show how Beyoncé's music is a source of healing and kinship for many fans, particularly Black women and queer communities of color.