Rate My Professor Katie Zhukov

Dr. Katie Zhukov is a Senior Research Fellow at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. She commenced her music studies at the Special Music School for Gifted Children in Kharkov, Ukraine, before migrating to Australia. Zhukov earned a BMus with first-class honours from the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide (1982), a Masters in Performance from the Juilliard School of Music, New York (1985, recipient of an ITT International Fellowship), a PhD in music psychology from the University of New South Wales (2005), and a Graduate Certificate in Education (Higher Education) from the University of Sydney (2008).

Zhukov's career spans professional piano performance, teaching, and research leadership. She has performed numerous concertos with professional and amateur orchestras, presented solo and chamber recitals, and released three solo piano CDs of Australian music broadcast on ABC Classic FM. She taught music theory, history, research skills, and piano at Sydney Conservatorium, Queensland Conservatorium, and Western Australian Conservatorium, receiving the Sydney Conservatorium Teaching Award for excellence in piano teaching (2003) and three nominations for Outstanding Academic at the University of Queensland, where she was a Research Fellow for 11 years developing evidence-based sight-reading training curricula. She held a Visiting Fellowship at UNSW (2020-2023), taught intensive piano pedagogy modules at Melbourne Conservatorium (2017, 2019), and has supervised honours and research higher degree students. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on sight-reading skills, performance anxiety, studio pedagogy, collaborative creativity, music mentoring, choral expertise development, and career skills for musicians. She has published 21 journal articles in high-impact venues like Frontiers in Psychology, Psychology of Music, Musicae Scientiae, and British Journal of Music Education, including highly cited papers such as 'Creative collaboration and collaborative creativity: A systematic literature review' (2021, 140 citations), 'A good news story: Early-career music teachers' accounts of their “flourishing” professional identities' (2017, 132 citations), 'Strengthening music provision in early childhood education' (2019, 90 citations), and recent works like 'Development of early choral expertise: insights from middle school elite choristers' (2025) and 'Long-term impacts of cathedral choral training on female choristers’ lives and careers' (2025). Zhukov has edited three volumes of Australian Women Composers’ Piano Anthology (2015-2021), secured over $100,000 in grants, served on editorial boards of the International Journal of Music Education and Frontiers in Psychology, examined theses, and delivered keynote addresses including at the New Zealand Registered Music Teachers Conference (2018).