Newcastle University

Background

Kirsten Gibson read music at the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University. She graduated from Newcastle University in 2000, winning the David Barlow Best Finalist Prize. In 2001 Kirsten completed an MLitt (with Distinction) at Newcastle University and subsequently completed a PhD in 2006 on John Dowland’s printed ayres under the supervision of Dr Ian Biddle and Dr Magnus Williamson.

While undertaking doctoral research, Kirsten taught on a variety of undergraduate courses at Newcastle University. In September 2005 she was appointed temporary lecturer in music at The Open University. During this year she held the position of production course team chair for a new course entitled ‘Start Listening to Music’ and was also a course team member of ‘An Introduction to the Humanities’ and contributor to a new third level course entitled ‘Music and Words’. Kirsten was appointed lecturer in music at the International Centre for Music Studies in September 2006. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Roles and Responsibilities

Degree Programme Director, BA (Hons) in Music

Undergraduate Admissions Tutor

Qualifications

BA (Hons), First Class
MLitt, with Distinction
PhD ('John Dowland's Printed Ayres: Texts, Contexts, Intertexts')
CASAP (Certificate of Advanced Studies in Academic Practice)

Previous Positions

2005-06 Lecturer in Music, The Open University.

Research Interests

o Early modern English secular song
o Authorship and print culture in early modern England
o Music and Elizabethan and Jacobean court politics
o Early modern medical theory
o Gender studies
o Cultural history
o Historiography

Current Work

Kirsten is working on a number of articles that have been generated from her doctoral research. She has also recently co-edited a collection of essays on western art music and masculinity with Ian Biddle, published by Ashgate in August 2009.

Postgraduate Supervision

Sarah Robinson (AHRC-funded PhD on Female Wind Players in Early Modern Europe)

Edward Cross (PhD on Early Recordings of Violinists) 

Esteem Indicators

Kirsten is a member of the editorial committee for the new online journal Radical Musicology.

She has also given papers at a number of international conferences and invited research seminars:

Royal Musical Association Medieval-Renaissance Conference, July 2004
‘Between Subjection and Autonomy: Authorial Self-Fashioning in John Dowland’s The First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1597)’.

Royal Musical Association Research Student Conference, March 2005
‘Politicising Privacy in John Dowland’s “Can she excuse” ’

Renaissance Society of America, Annual Conference, April 2005
‘ “So to the wood went I”: Politicised Privacy and the Trope of the Woods in John Dowland’s “O sweet woods” ’

SINRS One-Day Symposium: The Renaissance Unconscious, February 2006
‘Corporeality, Scepticism and the “Inward Self” in John Dowland’s “Vnquiet thoughts”’

Oxford University, Faculty of Music, Graduate Colloquia, October 2007 and Southampton University, March 2009, 'Music, Melancholy and Masculinity in Early Modern England'

‘Concepts of Creativity in Seventeenth-Century England’ Symposium, Manchester University, September 2008 and the Institute for Musical Research, London, October 2008, 'Author, Musician, Composer: Creator? Figuring Musical Creativity in Print at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century'

Funding

Postgraduate Funding:

2000-02 Alumni Award (Newcastle University)
2000-02 ICMuS Scholarship
2002-05 AHRC Award

Undergraduate Teaching

MUS1012: Understanding Music History (Module Leader)
MUS3035: Print and the Politics of the Self in Early Modern England: The Music of John Dowland (Module Leader)
MUS3013, MUS3015, MUS3017 and MUS3019: Major and Minor Specialist Study Dissertations and Projects (Module Leader)
MUS2074: Music in the Renaissance (Module Leader)
MUS2076: Opera: History, Issues, Approaches (Contributor)

Postgraduate Teaching

Music and Historiography (co-taught with Ian Biddle)

• Gibson K. The Order of The Book: Materiality, Narrative and Authorial Voice in John Dowland's First Booke of Songes or Ayres. Renaissance Studies 2012, 26(1), 13-33.
• Biddle I, Gibson K, ed. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.
• Gibson K. Music, Melancholy and Masculinity in Early Modern England. In: Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson, ed. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 41-66.
• Gibson K. How hard an enterprise it is’: Authorial self-fashioning in John Dowland's printed books. Early Music History 2007, 26, 43-89.
• Gibson K. 'So to the Wood Went I': Politicizing the Greenwood in Two Songs by John Dowland. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 2007, 132(2), 221-251.
• Gibson Kirsten. ‘The Rarest Musitian that his Age did Behold’: Fame, Musical Reputation and the Early Reception History of John Dowland. Early Music 2013. In Preparation.
• Biddle I, Gibson K, ed. Noise, Audition, Aurality: Histories of the Sonic Worlds of Europe, 1500-1918. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013. In Preparation.