Brydie-Leigh Bartleet

Professor Brydie Leigh Bartleet FAHA is Deputy Director of the Creative Arts Research Institute and Deputy Director (Research) at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Australia. For more than two decades, she has led an innovative research program exploring how music and the arts can address complex social challenges and strengthen communities.

As a world-leading expert on community music, her work investigates how music making can foster social justice, equity, inclusion, and wellbeing—particularly in contexts marked by entrenched disadvantage, displacement, and division. Her current projects examine the role of community music in reducing social inequity; acting as a cultural determinant of health for First Nations communities; and enhancing social inclusion and wellbeing for people experiencing poverty, homelessness, isolation, and loneliness.

Professor Bartleet has received seven major national competitive grants, ten funded consultancies with leading arts, social, and health organisations, and five prestigious fellowships for research conducted with First Nations communities, in prisons, war affected cities, remote regions, health and education settings. Her research has had significant impact across academia, community sectors, and international networks, delivering tangible benefits to policy, education, health, social and arts sectors.

She serves on the Boards of the Social Impact of Music Making international research platform (Belgium) and the Queensland Music Festival, and is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Community Music. Her recent honours include Vice Chancellor’s Awards for Research Excellence (Leadership 2022; Research Team 2023), a Fulbright Senior Fellowship (2022, awarded 2020), an Arts for Good Fellowship (2018–2019), and Australian University Teacher of the Year (2014).