My research interests fall into two areas: On the one hand I interrogate issues of music and identity, particularly (German) national identities in the "long" nineteenth century, as demonstrated in her monograph History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848-1914 (Boydell, 2012). I'm also returning frequently to the operas of Richard Strauss and the music dramas of Richard Wagner, having recently completed chapters about Wagner's medievalism and the reception history of the Ring.
My other main research area is music in the early modern era, particularly sacred music and the works of Orlando di Lasso. Currently I'm working on a British-Academy funded monograph entitles Cloistered Voices: Music and Monasteries in Early-Modern Germany, 1550-1632. I have published widely on both sixteenth- and nineteenth-century music and frequently speak at national and international conferences.
Research group membership
- Co-director, with Dr Alexandra Wilson, of OBERTO (Oxford Brookes: Exploring Research Trends in Opera), the opera research group at Oxford Brookes University. We organise annual study days, conferences and lectures on topical themes in opera studies, edit publications and disseminate our opera-related research to wider audiences.
- Member of the Royal Musical Association, Gesellschaft für Musikforschung and the International Musicological Society as well as the German Studies Society, the Wagner Society and the Historischer Verein für Mittelfranken.
Research grants and awards
In 2018/2019 I enjoyed the support of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for my project Cloistered Voices: Music and Monasteries in Early Modern Germany.
Its previous incarnation, "Music as a gendered practice in South-German nunneries and monasteries", was supported by a British Academy Small Research Grant. The Music & Letters Trust funded a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Vancouver 2016.
Research impact
I disseminate my research to wider audiences beyond academia through public lectures, radio broadcasts and accessible writings such as programme notes for Bavarian Radio or liner notes for recordings. Recent activities include:
- two concerts with the renowned Brabant Ensemble (dir. Stephen Rice) entitled "A monk's life". The concerts featured music by Lasso, A. Gabrieli, Aichinger, Clemens non Papa and several composers who were themselves in holy orders, and traced the lifestory of a sixteenth-century monk through the music he would have encountered.
- pre-concert talk at the "Proms Plus" events, introducing Wagner's orchestral writing and Richard Strauss' relationship to Mozart.
- interval talks for BBC Radio3's "Opera on 3" broadcasts and contributions to their online Opera Guides (e.g. Tannhäuser).
- curating the musical exhibits for the exhibitionMichael Ostendorfer und die Reformation in Regensburg
- text for a recording of Orlando di Lasso's Requiem and motets by Girton College Choir and Gareth Wilson (Toccata classics TOCC0397)
Further information
For further information and downloadable papers and publications please visit my Academia profile.