Paula Maust is a performer, scholar, and educator dedicated to fusing research and creative practice to amplify underrepresented voices. She is the creator of Expanding the Music Theory Canon, an extensive open-source collection of music theory examples by women and/or people of color. This is the first resource of this magnitude and scope, and it is focused on concepts covered in the undergraduate core music theory curriculum. A book based on the project was released in December 2023 with SUNY Press. Paula also recently collaborated with Auralia & Musition to curate a collection of digital worksheets to accompany the book. Paula has given lectures about the importance of diversity in pedagogical materials at New York University, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, Indiana University, Peabody Conservatory, and Texas Tech University. Her research on the topic has been published in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and the Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music.

Paula’s other primary research interest is early modern women musicians and their contributions to the development of Western classical music as composers, performers, patrons, and teachers. She is an early modern area editor for Oxford University Press’s women, gender, and sexuality revision of Grove Music Online and is a frequent guest lecturer on a variety of topics pertaining to women’s musical activities. Recent speaking engagements include George Washington University, the University of Pittsburgh, the Boulanger Initiative, University of Maryland Baltimore County, the Peabody Musicology Colloquium, and Shenandoah University. She has published articles about the reception history of early modern women in Women & Music and EMAg. She has presented her research for the Early Music America Summit, the Society for Eighteenth Century Music, the American Musicological Society, the Indiana University Historical Performance Institute, the American Handel Society, the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic, and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.

As a harpsichordist and organist, Paula has been praised for combining “great power with masterful subtlety” (DC Metro Theater Arts) and as a “refined and elegant performer” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). In her work as the co-director of Musica Spira, she curates lecture-concerts aimed at telling the stories of early modern women musicians. The ensemble’s debut album of never-before-recorded works by the seventeenth-century nuns Isabella Leonarda and Maria Perucona will be released in 2026. Paula also performs extensively as a chamber musician in the Washington, D.C. area with ensembles including the Folger Consort, the Washington Bach Consort, and InSeries opera.

Paula is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where she teaches courses in the undergraduate core and graduate seminars on Expanding the Canon, Analyzing Musical Mad Scenes, and Baroque Counterpoint. She was recently co-chair of the Department’s committee that rewrote the undergraduate core classroom theory curriculum. In summer 2025, Paula was invited to speak about the new curriculum as a keynote panelist for a theory pedagogy conference at New York University.