Austin Fitterer is entering his second year of coursework as a Ph.D. student in Music Theory and History at the University of Connecticut. He is also a graduate teaching assistant for MUSI 3313/3314. Austin has completed a Graduate Certificate in Music History Pedagogy at UMass Amherst and will be completing a Graduate Certificate in Cognitive Sciences while attending UConn. Austin has spent his undergraduate and graduate careers tutoring music theory and aural skills in addition to participating in chamber and choral ensembles. He is also a beginning composer and his first published choral work (Prayer of St. Francis) is available at https://noteforge.com.

A lifelong lover of learning, Austin is currently a student member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi as well as the Society for Music Theory and American Musicological Society. His research interests include music cognition, philosophies of music, music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and music within political and religious/mystical traditions. He also presented his research at the Yale Graduate Music Symposium in February 2026 and recently participated in the AMS Summer Institute “Studying Early Music with Computers” in New York City. Austin is originally from North Dakota and enjoys board games, extending his daily streak on Duolingo, adding more books to his “To-Be-Read” list, and commiserating with others about the loss of the Library of Alexandria.