Teaching

I teach 19th- and 20th-century music history and analysis at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Current and recent undergraduate lecture courses include The Schumanns and their Circle, Richard Strauss and the Representation of Women, The String Quartet between Classicism and Modernism, Beethoven: Between History and Myth, The Art of Song, and Musical Thought and Scholarship. Masters’ seminars have included Aesthetics, Music and Travel, and Love Songs: The Past 900 Years.

About me

I grew up in Salford and was introduced to music by the free violin lessons then offered by the local music education services. I went on to study music at The Queen’s College, Oxford, then completed a MA at Nottingham and a MFA and PhD at Princeton. I taught for two years at the University of Reading, and for 10 years at the University of Manchester, before joining St Catherine’s and the Oxford Music Faculty in October 2014. I have been a Visiting Fellow at Columbia University, New York, at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, and at Harvard University. I still enjoy playing the violin.

Research

I write mostly about nineteenth- and twentieth-century song and chamber music. I have written books about Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven, song cycles, and song in performance, and am currently writing about string quartets. Further information about my research activities can be found on the Faculty of Music’s website.

Graduate supervision

The topics of my recent and current doctoral students have ranged from Schubert, Schumann, Richard Strauss, and Benjamin Britten, to Japanese art-song, German operetta-film, medievalism in contemporary opera, global organology and female music education in nineteenth-century Ireland. Enquiries from prospective masters students and doctoral researchers are welcome. I have also been a mentor for postdoctoral awards and a host for visiting scholars.