The Department is at the forefront of current research and postgraduate teaching across music styles and repertoires from a wide variety of critical perspectives. From 19th Century classical music to game music our staff and students undertake cutting edge, internationally recognised research. We are home to the Institute of Popular Music (IPM), the first academic centre created specifically to study popular music, and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Composition and Technology (ICCaT), a research institute dedicated to exploring how music composition and sonic art forms intersect with technology, performance and perception.

Overview

In a UNESCO City of Music with a wealth of musical institutions, organizations, festivals and events, our PhD students also have an opportunity to both study and participate through partnership with locally based cultural and creative industries.

Our lecturers and postgraduate students conduct research on a wide variety of topics in a vibrant and diverse department within an internationally renowned city of music. Our world-leading expertise in music encompasses numerous methodological approaches and critical perspectives including critical musicology, popular music studies, composition, music psychology and ethnomusicology. We particularly welcome research proposals that match those of our researchers, including:

Music industries

Music analysis – (with a particular emphasis on aesthetics, psychoanalysis, music and emotion, popular music)

Music and the moving image (film, television, music in gaming and music video)

Critical theoretical approaches (including Gender studies, race and ethnicity and diaspora)

Heritage and history

Non-Western musics

Composition (with a particular emphasis on its intersection with technology)

Technology and digitisation

Ethnography and ethnomusicology

Jazz studies

Music psychology