Barry Ross has research interests in music cognition, specifically tonal syntax and its relationship to language. He is also interested the origins of human musicality, the cognitive structure of tonal knowledge in general, and communication and meaning in music. Barry completed his PhD at the Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Ian Cross. There, he conducted experimental research on the cognitive relationship between linguistic and musical syntax, as well as the notion of integrative processing in music. Between 2014 and 2018, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town, where he worked on the implications of east African traditional music on current models of pitch cognition.
