Kathy Hinde: Piano Migrations

The Music Department at Oxford Brookes University is internationally recognised as a centre of excellence in research and we warmly welcome applications from prospective PhD students who would like to work with us. We can offer a vibrant environment for research in Historical Musicology, Popular Music Studies, and Composition and Sonic Art. The most recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) identified world-leading research in Opera and Operatic Studies; Popular Music; and the interdisciplinary territory of Sonic Art. Our subject expertise is unusually broad, with staff research interests ranging from music in sixteenth-century nunneries to the work of Radiohead, and from Puccini’s operas to the sonic archaeology of urban sites.

There is a growing number of PhD students in Music both in Historical Musicology, Composition and Sonic Art and Interdisciplinary Practice-Led Research. Particular strengths in Opera and Operatic Studies; Popular music Criticism and Practice; and Composition and Sonic Art are supported by related research units:

• OBERTO (Oxford Brookes: Exploring Research Trends in Opera)
• PMRU (Popular Music Research Unit)
• SARU (Sonic Art Research Unit)

We are able to offer doctoral supervision in the following areas:

Historical musicology

• Opera (particularly the works of Puccini, Wagner, Strauss, Verdi and Smyth)
• Operatic culture of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries (particularly in Italy and Britain), including opera’s social, political and aesthetic contexts; singers, recordings and performance culture; and opera criticism
• Music in 19^th-century culture
• Music and national identities
• Reception studies, canon formation and music historiography
• Music, gender and religion in the early modern period

Popular music studies

• Popular music and popular song (particularly the music of Radiohead, Elvis Costello and The Beach Boys)
• Historical and theoretical topics in popular music and song writing
• Welsh popular music
• Music journalism
• Film music
• Critical musicology

Composition & Sonic Art

We are able to support practice-led PhD study in Composition, Sound Art, Soundscape Studies, Acousmatic and Electroacoustic Composition, Live Electronics.

Recent Projects include:

• The Transit of Sound and the Perception of Sonic Phenomena
• Investigations in the zone of anomaly: the perceptual interaction between sound and physical objects
• Sounding Severn: landscape and music
• The domestic soundscape
• The Role of the Bass Guitar in Contemporary Art Music

For more information about the PhD program in Music contact Dr. Paul Whitty.