Héctor Vázquez-Cordoba

Recipient of the Mary Catherine and Gloria Marshall Award (2019) and the Myer Horowitz Award (2018).

Héctor Vázquez-Cordoba is originally from Naolinco, Mexico. Héctor recently completed his PhD at the University of Victoria in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. His PhD research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellowship and addressed the embedding of music with Indigenous roots into Mexico’s national elementary curriculum. Héctor also holds a Bachelor of Music in Performance (Universidad Veracruzana), a Master’s degree in Education (Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education), and a Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (University of Victoria). During his doctoral studies, Hector received diverse awards, scholarships, and grants at the faculty and university level. As a member of the Centre for Youth and Society, Héctor was awarded the Mary Catherine and Gloria Marshall Award and the Myer Horowitz Award.

In Héctor's doctoral study, Huasteco community members noted the importance of collaborations with music educators and expressed willingness to collaborate with them in order to reflect on potential ways to embed Huasteco music in their classrooms. Due to the willingness of Huasteco community members to collaborate with music educators, Héctor is currently working on a research project to bring a cohort of music education students to the Huasteco region. Students will engage in cultural and musical activities along with Huasteco music culture bearers in an 8-day immersion experience. The goal of this research project is to analyze how an immersion experience with Huasteco culture bearers impacts whether music education students are willing to partner with the Huasteco community in bringing Huasteco music into their future teaching practice in grade K-12 classrooms in Mexico. This research project is funded by the International Society for Music Education and the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research.