As Director of Performance, I oversee and facilitate the academic and extracurricular music-making activities of students and staff across the college. Students and staff should contact me for questions about the Music House, music equipment, performance tuition, college music prizes or anything related to music-making in college.
About me
I am an orchestral conductor and academic with a commitment to fostering social justice and environmental sustainability within and through orchestral music. I hold postgraduate degrees in orchestral conducting and percussion performance, and completed my doctorate in Music at St Catherine’s College on the social psychology of orchestral performance in 2016.
Alongside my role at Catz, I am the Conducting Fellow of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and Coordinator of the orchestra’s Side-by-Side programme for young musicians. I hold a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at the University of Sheffield researching the Orchestras of Afghanistan and am Director of Research for the Oxford Conducting Institute.
My Research
My research is focused on the social-psychological and socio-political aspects of orchestral music-making – from the intricacies of co-performer communication in modern and historically informed contexts, to the politics of participation and orchestras’ geo-political significance.
I explore these questions through a blend of practice-based research and empirical investigation – combining my work as a conductor and performer with my academic pursuits. A focus of my work has been to develop new technological solutions for addressing methodological hurdles in orchestral research, such as gaining access to performers thoughts and experiences while engaged in the act of performance and capturing micro-timing data from large numbers of orchestral players simultaneously.
My doctoral research at the University of Oxford studied creativity and authorship in orchestral performance by investigating the influences that shape orchestral players’ musical ‘decision-making’ in rehearsals and performances while my postdoctoral work on the AHRC-funded Transforming 19th-Century Historically Informed Practice explored the consequences for performers and listeners on experimental approaches to 19th-century style, with a focus on the effects of ‘expressive asynchrony’.
In my current research project, I am collaborating with Afghan music scholars and practitioners to research the current and historical orchestral practices of Afghanistan.
