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Laura Tunbridge elected Fellow of the British Academy

Catz Fellow Professor Laura Tunbridge has today been elected a Fellow of The British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Laura has been admitted to the fellowship in recognition of her outstanding contribution to her subject. Laura teaches and undertakes research into musicology at Catz and has recently been described as, ‘one of the most significant public musicologists in Britain today.’

This latest recognition of Laura’s work comes on top of a year of other successes, including, just last month, her receipt of the Royal Musical Association’s Dent Medal.

Laura also received critical acclaim for her biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, A Life in Nine Pieces, which was released in 2020 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of composer’s birth.

A number of other academics from across the world have been elected fellows alongside Laura, including four other Oxford academics. You can see the full list on the British Academy website.

Building back better

Welcoming the new cohort of Fellows, the British Academy President Professor Julia Black, said: ‘As the new President of the British Academy, it gives me great pleasure to welcome this new cohort of Fellows, who are as impressive as ever and remind us of the rich and diverse scholarship and research undertaken within the SHAPE disciplines – the social sciences, humanities and the arts. I am very much looking forward to working with them on our shared interests.

‘The need for SHAPE subjects has never been greater. As Britain recovers from the pandemic and seeks to build back better, the insights from our diverse disciplines will be vital to ensure the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the UK and will continue to provide the cultural and societal enrichment that has sustained us over the last eighteen months. Our new Fellows embody the value of their subjects and I congratulate them warmly for their achievement.’

Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship of over 1,400 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas. It is also a funding body for research, nationally and internationally, and a forum for debate and engagement.

About Professor Laura Tunbridge

Professor Laura Tunbridge is the Henfrey Fellow and Tutor in Music at St Catherine’s. She teaches 19th- and 20th-century music history and analysis at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Recent undergraduate lecture courses include Richard Strauss and the Representation of Women, The String Quartet after Beethoven, The Art of Song, and Musical Thought and Scholarship.

She read Music as an undergraduate at The Queen’s College, Oxford, before completing an MA at the University of Nottingham, followed by an MFA and then a PhD at Princeton University in the USA.