Research Forum

Welcome to the Music Department’s 2024-2025 Research Forum. We are extremely pleased to once again be able to offer a fantastic programme of events and to welcome inspiring and distinguished speakers from all musical disciplines.

Programme for Michaelmas 2024 

Tuesday 8 October In person  Professional Expectations for Postgraduate Students (Tuomas Eerola) 

Tuesday 15 October In person Dr Charlotte Bentley (Newcastle) America, genre, and opera, c.1893 

Tuesday 22 October [no meeting]

Tuesday 29 October In person  Northern Bridge Applications Workshop (Tuomas Eerola) 

Tuesday 5 November In person Dr Tommaso Sabbatini (Bristol)  Féerie and the Sound of Nineteenth-Century Parisian Commercial Theatre

Tuesday 12 November In person Dr Caroline Curwen (Durham)  Music, Colour, and Cognition: Music Colour Synaesthesia and Musical Imaginings

Tuesday 19 November In person Dr Michelle Phillips (RNCM) What makes a live music experience special?  Testing audience response to live music

Tuesday 26 November In person Andrew Moss, University Research Culture Manager  Flourish at Durham: Nurturing innovation and growth

Tuesday 3 December Online Prof John Roeder (British Columbia School of Music)  Grouping variation and its effects in cyclical world music

Tuesday 10 December  In person   Professor Tuomas Eerola (Durham)  Life after the PhD

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Programme for Epiphany Term 2025

Tuesday 14 January  (in person) Dr Matthew Williams (York) Resonances of the Sacred: Coldplay, Gospel Stylisation, and Secular Meanings

Tuesday 21 January  (in person) Dr Sophie Ward (Durham) Music, Impact and Education

Tuesday 28 January  (in person) Jie (Helen) He (Wuhan Conservatory of Music, WHCM)  Intertextuality and Audience Perception: Chinese Popular Songs and the Ancient Chinese Poems of Li-Bai

Tuesday 4 February  (speaker online) Prof. Dr. Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann (Max Planck Institute) Singing angels, niche musical tastes, and how music might not be a universal language: Examples for a transdisciplinary aesthetic of music

Tuesday 11 February  (in person) Dr Hector Sequera (Durham) Title TBC

Tuesday 18 February - (in person TBC) Prof Sarah Hibberd (Bristol) The Dynamics of the Puritani Quartet: Tamburini in the Limelight (1836)

Tuesday 25 February  (in person) Dr Amanda Hsieh (Durham) ‘Our Tenor’, Fujiwara Yoshie

Tuesday 4 March  (in person) Professor Julian Horton (Durham)  Corpus Studies and the Nineteenth-Century Violin Concerto: Or, Why Formal Theory is Wrong about Concerto First-Movement Form

Tuesday 11 March - (speaker online) Dr Manuella Blackburn Sample libraries: studying and creating the building blocks of music production

Tuesday 18 March (in person) Postgraduate session 

Jamison Hankins, “Animate Instruments: The Metaphysical Power of the Prima Donna’s Voice in Nineteenth-Century London”

Hazel van der Walle, “Thoughtscapes in Music: An Examination of Thought Types Occurring During Music Listening Across 17 Genres”

Katie Vishwanath, “Comparing Absolute Pitch Recognition Between Western and Carnatic Musicians”

Take a look at our events pages or Music SharePoint site for more details.

Sessions take place on a Tuesday at 15:00 - 17:00 in the Student Union (Dunelm House)

Postgraduate Seminar

The Postgraduate Seminar is the platform for our postgraduate students to present their own research to peers and staff. Contributions take the form of formal papers or use more creative presentation formats, and lead to group discussion.

Study Days and Conferences

Postgraduate students organise conferences of various kinds, centred upon particular themes and often working in partnership with external funders. These events feature invited keynote speakers and issue open calls for papers to postgraduate and senior scholars from around the country and overseas.