Graduate study and postdoc mentoring

Graduate Study

I am interested in supervising projects on late-medieval music, basically in the period c.1200-c.1380. I will be most interested in your project (and particularly useful to you as a supervisor) if you want to work on anything involving any combination of the following: songs, motets, manuscripts, intertextual issues, broad cultural issues, court culture, music analysis, gender and sexuality studies, nature and animals, French literature, historiography, the ontology of music, Chaucer. If you have only vague ideas for a project in this area, I might be able to suggest something that would build on your interests and skills — just get in touch by email.

Ideal students should be willing to learn to read in modern German and an appropriate medieval language, willing to examine medieval manuscripts, and willing to engage with a spectrum of issues from the minutiae of musical details and the broadest of critical approaches. If you are interested in an academic career after your graduate work, I will offer you assistance with professional development, including the delivery of conference papers and job talks, IT and digital humanities use, and teaching.

I run a grad and postdoc ‘reading group’ which meets three times a term and during the summer as a form of group supervision, focussing on career development, training, and the discussion of recent work in the field by members of the group and others. This group is only open to my students and postdocs and seeks to provide a safe and productive space for intellectual development and discussion. My current and recent students and postdocs are listed here. Please feel free to get in touch with them for the unvarnished account of what it’s like working with me!

I am also interested in students coming for shorter periods from their home institutions as part of international exchange projects. Just get in touch.

Current doctoral students (3)

As co-supervisor:

• from 2020. Elizabeth Cullinane (co-supervised with Professor Helen Swift, Modern Languages): Manuscript Culture of the Capetian Adultery Scandal: Women’s Patronage and Audience.
• from 2024. Emma Cameron (co-supervised with Dr. Nicholas Perkins, English): Latin Music Theory and Lay Musical Knowledge in Late Medieval England.
• during 2023-24 as a recognized student at the University of Oxford, and from 2024– (informally). Philip Wetzler (supervised by Dr Michael Klaper, University of Jena): The music of the Sangspruch.

Former doctoral students with completion dates (11)

• 2024. Johanna-Pauline Thöne (co-supervised with Professor Catherine A. Bradley, University of Oslo): ‘Papal Polyphony during the Great Western Schism (1378–1417)’. Dr. Thöne is now a postdoc on Prof. Karen Desmond’s ERC-funded BROKENSONG project at the National University of Ireland, Maynouth.
• 2023. George Haggett (co-supervised with Professor Laura Tunbridge, Music): ‘Medievalism in Contemporary Opera’.
• 2023. Lachlan Hughes (co-supervised with Professor Francesca Southerden, Modern Languages): ‘Vernacular Song in Dante’s Florence’. After a year as a teaching Fellow at the University of Durham, Dr Hughes is now a Title A Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge.
• 2022. Jacob Mariani: ‘An unstopped string: bowed instruments in medieval Italy’. Dr Mariani is an instrument maker based in Italy.
• 2018. Marc Lewon (as advisor; supervisor: Reinhard Strohm): ‘Transformational practices in fifteenth-century German music’. Prof. Dr Lewon is Professur für Lauteninstrumente des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
• 2017. Joseph W. Mason: ‘Melodic exchange and musical violence in the thirteenth-century jeu-parti’ (see postdocs, below).
• 2017. Henry Drummond: ‘Accommodating Poetic, Linear Narratives with Cyclical Repetition-Based Musical Poetic Structures in the Cantigas de Santa Maria’. Following a four-year postdoc at the KU Leuven, Dr Drummond now has a three-year FWO Senior Postdoc (also at the KU Leuven) to work on his own project, ‘Jesuit Musical Inheritance in the Spanish Netherlands and United Provinces (1540–1648)’.
• 2017. Meghan Quinlan: ‘Contextualising the Contrafacta of Trouvère Song’. After a postdoc at the University of Uppsala Dr Quinlan is currently an Affiliated Researcher at Department of Musicology. She also continues to compose and conduct.
• 2016. Matthew P. Thomson: ‘Interaction between Polyphonic Motets and Monophonic Songs in the Thirteenth Century’ (see former postdocs, below).
• 2013. Henry Hope: ‘Constructing the Minnesänger musically’. Rev. Dr Hope is now the vicar of St Edward the Confessor Church in Cheddleton, Staffs.
• 2013. Christopher Garrard (as advisor for critical theory work; supervisor: Martyn Harry): Composition.

I am delighted to mentor, whether formally (if funded by an external funding body) or informally (if in association with a College JRF), any early career researchers in early music and methodologically related fields who have postdoctoral appointments in Oxford. If you would like to explore the possibilities for postdoctoral research work in Oxford, please get in touch with me or with one of my current or former postdocs.

Current postdocs (0):

Former postdocs (11):

•  2022–2024. Alexandre Cerveux held a Newton Fellowship at Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College to work on ‘The function of music in the acquisition of knowledge according to medieval Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic philosophical texts’. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the CNRS in Paris.
• 2021–2024. Joseph W. Mason was a Junior Research Fellow at New College, Oxford where he was working on a monograph on music and violence that encompasses crusade songs, the jeu-parti, pastourelles, and theorizations of love as a kind of war. Dr Mason has a blog with recordings here. From Jan 2025 he has been an Associate Professor in Music and the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge and an Official Fellow at Clare Hall.
• 2021–2023. Brianne Dolce is now working at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, where she is concerned with Higher Education Policy.
• 2020–2023. Alice Little now works in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
• 2020–2022. Emanuela Vai continues her work on art, liturgy, and music in the early-modern Venetian Republic, and is now the Head of the Bate Collection at the Music Faculty, University of Oxford.
• 2016–2021. Matthew P. Thomson is Assistant Professor of Music at University College, Dublin, Ireland.
• 2015-2017. Mikhail Lopatin, was a BA/RS Newton Postdoctoral Fellow at St Hugh’s College. He won the Westrup prize in 2019 for his article on metapoesis in trecento song.
• 2014-2016: Eleanor Giraud was Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College and is now Lecturer in Ritual Chant and Song at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland.
• 2010-2017. Katherine Butler was BA Postdoctoral Fellow and then Research Assistant on the AHRC funded project, Tudor Partbooks (see her research blog: Early Modern English Music). Dr Butler is now Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK.
• 2010-2013: Catherine A. Bradley was a Junior Research Fellow at Queen’s College, Oxford and is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, where she is running the ERC project BENEDICAMUS (2020-2026).
• 2009-2012: Matthew Cheung Salisbury was a Research Assistant for DIAMM. Rev. Dr Salisbury is now Lecturer in Music at University College, Oxford, UK and works as a priest in the Oxford diocese.