Professor Desmond Morrison Hunter

National Teaching Fellow 2000 Appointed as Professor of Music at the University of Ulster in 2004, Desmond Hunter has served as Head of School in Media and Performing Arts (2004-6) and Creative Arts (2006-8). He co-directed an FDTL project on 'Peer learning in Music' (1996-2000); the main outcome, a three-volume resource pack, was published in 2000 and disseminated widely. His National Teaching Fellowship project on assessment involved extensive collaboration with colleagues in universities and conservatoires across the UK and resulted in the publication 'How am I doing? Valuing and Rewarding Learning in Musical Performance in Higher Education' (2004). He has been involved in a range of teaching and learning initiatives at the University of Ulster, including the promotion of peer learning, the introduction of a PhD in Performance as a key area for the development of research as practice, the establishment of the Forum for Innovation in Teaching and Learning Support (2005), an important driver in identifying and foregrounding practice that is innovative and enriches the learning experience for students, and the chairing of the University working group on Creativity and Innovation (2006-7). Since the early 1990s he has promoted innovative approaches to teaching, learning and assessment, with a particular interest in peer and collaborative learning. He has published papers on assessment in the British Journal of Music Education and in the FDTL and NTF publications cited above. He has been invited to deliver keynote presentations at conferences, most recently at a British Council seminar on the topic 'Fostering and Assessing Creativity'. He continues to develop his work in the areas of collaborative learning, assessment, creativity and interdisciplinarity. In addition to his pedagogic research, he is active also in the areas of musicology and practice. An international prize winner on organ, he was appointed an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in recognition of his achievements as a concert organist. As a performer, he has given over 350 solo concerts throughout Europe and in the USA, many in prestigious venues, he has made numerous recordings for BBC Radio 3, and his two-CD set of the organ sonatas of C.V.Stanford, the first complete recording of these works, was hailed as 'an important and valuable release' (Gramophone).