Sarai Brinker

Sarai Brinker is a dedicated, award-winning educator engaged in teaching subjects related to music and society, popular music, creativity, and Western art music- everything from Hildegard to Taylor Swift. She is a facilitator and teaching artist for the Carnegie Hall Lullaby Project, a program that supports parental bonding with children through songwriting. Additionally, she is the Associate Editor of Popular Music and Society, a top ranked research journal publishing articles, book reviews, and audio reviews on popular music of any genre, time period, or geographic location.

She presents her work at national and international meetings including those of the Popular Culture Association, the International Musicological Society, the Association for Popular Music Education, and the College Music Society, as well as at a2ru (the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities), the Lilly Conferences for Evidence-Based Teaching and the Mediterranean Music Education Committee.

In addition to her work in musicology, she has a strong interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning. She is a member of the Texas Tech Teaching Academy and a former TEACH Consultant. She is a two-time recipient of the Professing Excellence Award and has also received the Mortar Board Apple Polishing Award and the Texas Tech Spotlight Award for teaching excellence.

She holds B.A. degrees in Natural History & Humanities and Music from Texas Tech University, an M.A. in Liberal Arts from Texas Christian University, and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts with an emphasis in musicology from Texas Tech University.

Her research interests include cross-cultural exchange, community building, and human flourishing through music. Her work frequently examines connections between music and identity. Recent projects include cross cultural collaborations with the internationally recognized Dal’Ouna Ensemble, songwriting projects in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and various scholarly projects related to Taylor Swift. Previously, her fieldwork has examined worship music in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the impact of Christian Missionaries on worship hymns in Nalerigu, Ghana.

She believes teaching means being a part of a community searching for knowledge, truth, wisdom, and beauty- and that art and education have the potential to change the world.