Dr Joseph Peters has been with the National University of Singapore (NUS) since 1968, when as a student President of the University Music Society, he became instrumental in laying the ground work for extra-curricular music activities. He was employed by the University immediately after graduation in 1971 and assisted in the development of the first Music Department, as well as a large extra-curricular music programme.

Between 1978 and 1981, he studied at the music conservatory at the University of the Philippines where he had important mentors and teachers whom he still works with today. He continued working in  music at the NUS till 1993 and thereafter, began a new career in the IT domain, where today, he manages multimedia production and services under the NUS Centre for Instructional Technology. He obtained his Ph.D in music from the University of Western Australia – he wrote on a macro-measure, reputably the first macro-measure in music education that could be used for curricula evaluation.

His post doctoral music research activities are progressing on the fly with his IT work, and is concentrated mainly in extending his macro-measure into tools that could contain clues and solutions for cross-intonational music listening and understanding. Between 2000 to 2006, he taught a pioneering music elective "Music East and West" at the Singapore Management University, where he designed a music lab enabling him to merge teaching and learning paradigms from ethnomusicology, music education and music technology. Currently, he is extending this pedagogy in a new course he is teaching, "Processes in Asian Musics" - for music major students at the Singapore Polytechnic.

Joe is a member of many international professional organizations (AES, ISME, ICTM, International Rondalla Association, etc.). He has played a major role for Singapore in many ASEAN music projects since 1980 - ASEAN Youth Orchestra, ASEAN Youth Symphonic Band, ASEAN Composers Forum on Traditional Music, ASEAN Composers Workshop, and ASEAN COCI publication projects. He continues to publish papers and write music - the latest composition being "DESH for Sitar,Tabla and Orchestra" performed in 2006 by the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra.

Dr Peters established the NUS Rondalla in 1981, the first of its genre in Singapore. He provided opportunities for students with no musical background to learn this form of music-making in a systematic manner using his Heuristic Method. The NUS Rondalla reached its high point in 1988 with students and alumni generating their own musical scores and performing in concerts that combined dance and singing.

Today, he is re-structuring the NUS Rondalla and hopes to bring them back to its former peak. He is revising his Heuristic Method to suit the current students, and ensuring that the manufacturers in the Philippines develop quality instruments. He is also mentor to a number of other rondallas developing in Singapore.