Jenine Brown is Associate Professor of Music Theory at The Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University. She joined the music theory department in 2015 after earning a Ph.D. in music theory from the Eastman School of Music. She also holds degrees from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and is the recipient of numerous executive leadership training certificates from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Courses taught include the undergraduate ear training core curriculum and a graduate seminar that explores the intersection of music cognition and music analysis. These courses offer Brown the opportunity to guide students on their journey to hearing musical structure, a pursuit in which she is extremely passionate. Brown is a recipient of Johns Hopkins University’s Catalyst Award (2023), a COVID-19 Research Accelerator Grant (2021), and the Technology Fellowship from the Center for Educational Resources (2019). She is also the inaugural winner of the Peabody Conservatory’s CARES Award for a faculty member (2020).

Brown’s research primarily takes an empirical approach to studying listener expectation and musical knowledge acquisition, and she has published on a variety of topics: 

• The pre-dominant function: Music Perception, Music Theory Online (forthcoming), and Empirical Musicology Review
• Pre-compositional structure in post-tonal music: Music Theory Spectrum, Music Perception, and the Journal of New Music Research
• Aural skills pedagogy: Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy (two articles: one on a rhythmic shorthand method for melodic dictation, and the second is forthcoming on using backward design in aural skills curricula), Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy, and The Routledge Companion to Aural Training in Music Education, and Research Studies in Music Education. She has also provided resources for teaching freshman aural skills in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and has published two reviews of online ear-training tools in College Music Symposium.
• The Suzuki Violin School:American Suzuki Journal, College Music Symposium
• Popular music: SMT-Pod, and in-progress research on modulation
• Additional collaborative projects with colleagues and advisees at her institution can be read in Frontiers in Psychology and the Journal of Singing.

She has also presented at many conferences including meetings of the Society for Music Theory (2024, 2023, 2021), the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (2022, 2019, 2017, 2015, 2013, 2011, 2009), the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (2023, 2021, 2014), the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (2024), the Association for Psychological Science (2019, 2012), Music Theory Midwest (2014), APCAM (2020, 2017), the American Musicological Society (2024), and the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic (2025, 2024, 2022, 2021, 2020), among others.

Brown has served the Society for Music Theory as Associate Editor of Music Theory Online, as program committee member for the annual 2020 conference, on the Nominations Committee, and as Statistician. Regionally, she served the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic as President (2022–24), Secretary (2018–22), and Program Chair (2019); she also led efforts in hosting the 20^thanniversary MTSMA conference at Peabody in 2023. Brown has been involved with the College Board’s AP Music Theory exam annually since 2011; she is one of eight featured collegiate instructors on the College Board’s AP Daily, was the 2022–23 Visiting Fellow in Course and Exam Development for AP Music Theory, and currently serves as the higher ed co-chair of the AP Music Theory Test Development Committee.