Biography

Anita B. Kumar is a musician, educator, nonprofit organizer, and scholar based in Washington State. Originally from the Chicago area, Dr. Kumar has most recently taught at the collegiate level as a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington and Georgia State University in Atlanta. Dr. Kumar’s primary teaching experience is as a band director; for the past decade, she has worked with adult musicians on the UW and GSU campuses and with the Around the Sound Community Band in North Seattle. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Kumar served as band director at Landmark and Melvin E Sine elementary schools and instrumental music lead teacher in the Glendale Elementary School District in Glendale, Arizona.

Dr. Kumar also has significant experience in nonprofit business management. She has worked in the Admissions and Recruitment office for the UW School of Music; for Music Center of the Northwest, a community music school in North Seattle; for the Seattle Jewish Chorale; and on projects with the Center for Educational Partnerships in Music at GSU, including the award-winning Sound Learning program, an Atlanta school-community outreach program in partnership with East Lake and Cousins Family Foundations.

Dr. Kumar’s research interests include psychosocial perceptions of teachers and conductors in large ensembles, audiovisual perception of conducting gesture, school-community engagement partnerships, and evaluation of preservice teachers. Her work is published in Frontiers in Psychology, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Psychology of Music, and by GIA Publications. She also occasionally serves as a statistics consultant for several fellow researchers, including occasional data collection and analysis for the Institute for Composer Diversity.

Dr. Kumar lives in Mountlake Terrace, Washington with her partner, Jesse Cole Guthery, and their cat, Xena.