Dr Joe Bennett is a musicologist, writer, broadcaster, and researcher, specializing in popular music and songwriting. As a professor at Berklee College of Music, he teaches artist development, songwriting, music copyright, and song analysis. He has written more than 30 tuition books, and his music education compositions are performed by students all over the world. As an expert witness forensic musicologist, Joe advises lawyers, publishers, artists, and songwriters on matters of musical similarity. He holds a Music Ph.D from the University of Surrey and a National Teaching Fellowship from the Higher Education Academy. Joe blogs about songwriting copyright at joebennett.net.

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IG: @joebennettmusicology

Christopher Doll is Associate Professor in the Music Department of the Mason Gross School of the Arts and the School of Graduate Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. His scholarly interests include tonality, intertextuality, pedagogy, and forensic musicology. He has spoken at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Experience Music Project, and various universities here and abroad, and he is the author of the monograph Hearing Harmony: Toward a Tonal Theory for the Rock Era published by the University of Michigan Press.

Joseph Fishman’s research focuses on intellectual property, particularly as it affects the music industry. His recent scholarship has covered such legal issues as infringing similarity between songs, the role of expert witnesses in music copyright litigation, judges’ definition of musical originality, and trademark issues related to sound recordings. He is currently writing a book on how law affects the livelihoods of professional songwriters. He has also written extensively on the law of trade secrecy. His work has appeared in leading academic journals, including the Harvard Law Review, NYU Law Review, and the California Law Review, and he is a regular commentator in major media outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, USA Today, and Billboard.

Professor Fishman joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in fall 2015 after serving as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. He earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College with a joint major in music and religion, his M.Phil. in musicology from the University of Cambridge, and his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. After law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Jeffrey R. Howard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and for Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He practiced as an associate at Jenner & Block in the firm’s content, media, and entertainment group, where he specialized in litigation involving the music industry, before entering the legal academy.

Katherine M. Leo, PhD., J.D., is associate professor of music at Millikin University and author of Forensic Musicology and the Blurred Lines of Federal Copyright History (Lexington 2021). As an interdisciplinary historian and forensic musicologist, Dr. Leo’s research investigates the intersection of musicology and US law, with emphases on matters of creative process and analytical methods as they apply to copyright. Her internationally recognized research on the music industry’s engagement with commercial artists and the US judicial system has been notably featured in the Journal of American Musicological Society, Jazz Perspectives, and Grove Music Online.

Alexander Stewart is Professor of Music at the University of Vermont. He earned a Ph.D. in Music from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and an MM at Manhattan School of Music. During 2006-07, he was a Fulbright Scholar researching Afro-Mexican music and culture in Oaxaca, Mexico. His publications include a book on orchestral jazz for University of California Press (2007) and articles in Latin American Music Review, Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, The UMKC Law Review, American Studies, and other journals. As an active professional musician for more than forty years he has performed with leading musicians in jazz and popular music. In intellectual property matters, Dr. Stewart has provided expert opinions and analysis and lectured widely on music copyright for over twenty years. His cases have involved many leading artists and songwriters such as George Clinton, Lady Gaga, Bill Withers, Lizzo, Sam Smith, Marvin Gaye, Dua Lipa, Notorious B.I.G. Cardi B, Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars, and many others.