About IMAJIN
IMAJIN began in January 2022. We are a global group of musicians who work in the intersection of music-making and criminal legal systems including jails, prisons, detention centers, and re-entry organizations. We aim to create caring communities through relationship-building, self-expression through music-making and listening, and education about our respective work.
Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals play key roles in our efforts to transform societies away from cultures of revenge and punishment, and towards responsiveness to healing, solidarity, mutual responsibility, and care. We welcome people to join our monthly Zoom meetings and connect with us on social media.
Our Projects and Researchers
Leadership
Professor Mary Cohen
Co-founder
Mary Cohen is a Professor of Music Education at the University of Iowa, lead author of Music-Making in U.S. Prisons: Listening to Incarcerated Voices, and co-leader of IMAJIN. In 2025, she became an affiliate in Music and Peacebuilding with the Min-On Music Research Institute, based in Tokyo. In her research and creative scholarship, she works to create caring communities through music-making, collaborative songwriting, and community singing circles. She led the Oakdale Community Choir, with a total of 300 non-incarcerated and incarcerated singers, from 2009-2020. The participants wrote 150 original songs, and the choir sang 75 of these songs. For two years (2023-2025) she co-led weekly music groups inside the Linn County Juvenile Detention Center. She created the Inside Outside Songwriting Collaboration Project with incarcerated and non-incarcerated partners who build relationships while creating original songs. She now co-leads the Singing Love into Life Circle inviting returning citizens to join the monthly singing circles.
Associate Professor Alexis Kallio
Co-founder
An internationally recognised interdisciplinary scholar and qualitative methodologist, Alexis Kallio's research examines music education and research as political processes wherein individuals and social groups negotiate meaning, values, ideals and power. Her current work focuses particularly on how music programs can support justice-involved youth as part of policing or community initiatives, youth detention and community reintegration programs. Drawing together her expertise across music, education, and criminology, she explores how music can support a broader shift from punitive responses to youth offending to align with contemporary youth justice approaches that emphasise child-centredness, youth voice, and community connection. Alexis is currently Head of Music Studies at the Queensland Conservatorium, where she also previously served as Deputy Director (Research) and Deputy Director of the Creative Arts Research Institute. She is Editor in Chief of the leading international journal Research Studies in Music Education, and has (co)Edited the books: Difference and Division in Music Education, The Politics of Diversity in Music Education, and Music, Education, and Religion: Intersections and Entanglements.