Sarah Mead is a professor emerita of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she taught historical performance and music history for four decades and for several years chaired their Medieval and Renaissance Studies program. She served as Music Director for the annual Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America for seven years, and will return to that role in 2025. Her handbook on Renaissance theory is used in historical music programs around the country. Overseas she has performed, lectured, given master-classes, and led workshops in Brazil, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and is a sought-after lecturer and ensemble-coach in the US, where she is a founding member and music director of Nota Bene Viol Consort.