Music Research MPhil/PhD, option of joint PhD with HKU

Overview

The department has an international reputation for music research in history, theory, anthropology/ethnography and composition. We are particularly strong in Western music from the twelfth century to the present day, jazz, opera, film music, performance studies, and the musical cultures of the Middle East, South and South East Asia, Latin America and West Africa.

PhDs can be co-supervised with other arts & humanities or social sciences departments at King's, or with a department at another of our London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP) partners.

As a department, we believe in the complete equality of all areas of music research, and welcome students from all backgrounds, especially those who are currently under respresetnted in musicology, ethnomusicology, performance research, and composition.

Department of Music – jointly ranked 4th in the UK with Film (REF 2021). 100% per cent of the research impact and research environment was rated either ‘world leading (4*) or ‘internationally excellent (3*).

Current number of academic staff: 16.

Current number of research students: 40 FT and 12 PT.

Recent publications:   

• Lessons in Love and Violence and Written on Skin (George Benjamin). 

• The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330 (Emma Dillon). 

• The Letters of Cole Porter and Mozart: Lettere d@Italia (Cliff Eisen). 

• Romantic Empowerment at the Paris Opera in the 1770s and 1780s (Michael Fend).

• Thinking on our Feet: A Somatic Enquiry into a Haydn Minuet' (Joseph Fort). 

• Sovereign Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Matthew Head). 

• De oro y sombra (of gold and shadows), for ensemble (Silvina Milstein).

• Contemporary Carioca: Technologies of Mixing in a Brazilian Music Scene (Frederick Moehn). 

• Songs for a Dying World, for soprano and chamber ensemble (Edward Nesbit). 

• A History of Opera (Roger Parker). 

• Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature, and Performance in North India (Katherine Schofield with Francesca Orsini).  

• Puccinis Soundscapes: Realism and Modernity in Italian Opera (Arman Schwartz).  

• The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (Martin Stokes). 

• Islam and Popular Culture, (Martin Stokes, with Karin Van Nieuwkerk and Mark LeVine). 

• Brittens Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction (Heather Wiebe). 

• Of Time and the City: Verdis Don Carlos and its Parisian Critics (Flora Wilson).

Current research projects: ERC project, Music in London 1800-1851; British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, Histories of the Ephemeral: Writing on Music in Late Mughal India

Joint PhDs available: Exciting opportunities exist to gain a joint PhD with Hong Kong University or with King's own Department of Digital Humanities.

Our department forms part of the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP), which offers Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) studentships (www.lahp.ac.uk).

To study at King's, it is essential that you can communicate effectively in English and are able to do so in an academic environment. You are usually required to provide certification of your competence in English before starting your studies.

• register on the King's Apply Portal
• complete our online application form