Shortly after graduating she began to attend the courses music writing and harmony given by Profressor Andre Souris at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and as a result was invited to attend the Summer School for New Music in Darmstadt (Darmstädter Ferienkurse), where she met the Belgian musicologist Celestin Deliege, whom she married in 1954.
In 1979 she decided to return to study, and gained a bachelor's degree in Psychology from the Free University of Brussels (Université libre de Bruxelles), graduating in 1984.
[1] This organisation, whose foundation she led, was in part a response to the earlier formation of the North American Society for Music Perception and Cognition[2] (SMPC).
ESCOM has been the European host for four ICMCPs to date (Liege, Belgium 1994; Keele, UK 2000; Bologna, Italy 2006; Thessaloniki, Greece 2012).
Alongside the ICMPC, Irene Deliege also took a leading role in the stimulation and organisation of European scientific meetings, and the editing of multi-author volumes dedicated to specialist topics within the field of music cognition.
The journal has a unique remit, covering empirical science, artificial intelligence, education, systematic musicology, and philosophy.
In Actes del Premio Convegno Internazionale di Studi Musicale « Tendenze e metodi nella ricerca musocologica », Latina (Italy) septembre 1990.