Dr. Lauren Shepherd is a music theorist who researches popular music, genre, and new techniques for understanding music of the 20th and 21st century. Her scholarship presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the social and musical constructions of genre in American popular music that combines frameworks from music theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology with theories of gender, race, sexuality, and class. Through both her research and teaching, she strives to create an equitable and inclusive field of music theory.

Her forthcoming articles explore ideas of authenticity and intimacy in the musical generic space of bedroom pop and the musical language of composer Dorothy Rudd Moore. Additionally, Dr. Shepherd maintains research interests in pedagogy and music cognition. Her work can be found in Current Musicology, and she has presented papers at the annual conferences of the Society for Music Theory, the American Musicological Society, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US, the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, in addition to many regional conferences. During her time at Columbia University, Dr. Shepherd developed her pedagogical philosophy and trained other graduate instructors by serving as a Lead Teaching Fellow for the Department of Music and a Teaching Development Program Fellow through the Center for Teaching and Learning. She holds a PhD in Music Theory from Columbia University, an MM in Music Theory from the University of Arkansas, and a BA in Music and Psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.