PhD in Musicology
The School offers PhD supervision in a wide range of fields. A recent strength has been in nineteenth- / early twentieth-century music, with topics such as Exoticism in Massenet, Baroque influences in Brahms, Richard Strauss and Modernism, Salome, Strauss and Dance, and the music of Frank Bridge.
The School has always offered supervision in local Northern Irish / Irish topics. Dissertations have been completed on Concert Life in Belfast and Dublin, the Armagh Cathedral School and the Organ in Ulster, and one on BBC Northern Ireland is in progress.
There are several opportunities for PhD topics focusing on the rich holdings of the Queen’s University Library, notable the Thomas Moore Collection, a world-class resource for the study of Irish melodies in the nineteenth century, and the Hamilton Harty Collection, which includes autograph manuscripts, conducting scores, letters and other memorabilia. A catalogue of the latter is underway.
Recent appointments have enabled the School to extend its PhD supervision into new areas. Topics in Irish Traditional Music and in Contemporary Music and Sound Art are now available. Staff research interests are listed below.
Dr Sarah McCleave seeks PhD applicants with an interest in the area of the analysis of dance music.
Dr Franziska Schroeder seeks Ph.D. students whose research interests include: new performance environments, performance studies, critical/cultural studies in music and sonic arts, and improvisation.
Dr Aidan Thomson works on early twentieth-century British music and society, including, among others, the music of Elgar, Bax, Vaughan Williams and Smyth. He is interested in supervising topics on the reception and cultural context of these composers, the ‘Celtic twilight’ movement in British music, and early twentieth-century British musicological institutions.
Professor Yo Tomita is interested in proposals from prospective research students in any aspect of Bach studies. He is particularly keen to supervise topics in the reception of Bach's works in foreign lands, for example, the fugues in the early nineteenth century France.
Professor Ian Woodfield is currently working in the area of Mozart source studies, in particular on the operas Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni. There are opportunities for PhD research in the little-studied area of eighteenth-century keyboard arrangements of these works.