Socially-engaged music in theory and practice
Our research examines music's role in society. Focusing on community, education, health, policy, and justice.
Socially-engaged music in theory and practice
Our research examines music's role in society. Focusing on community, education, health, policy, and justice.
Some of our ongoing and recent projects and groups include:
- Music in the community
- Music Education
- The music industry and socio-economic issues
- Health and wellbeing in/through music
- Music and governmental policy
- Environmental and social justice
Adam Behr
Reader in Music, Politics and Society
I teach and research the intersections between the creative industries, cultural policy, music, and politics. I'm also interested in the sociology and history of popular music and their relationship to the politics of popular culture.
Following a PhD on the historical context and social dynamics of rock bands at the University of Stirling, I have researched and published on:
- cultural policy
- music and politics
- music and election campaigns
- the music industries
- popular music of the mid-twentieth to twenty first centuries
In addition to academic writing, I've written extensively for the web, as an editor and contributor to the Live Music Exchange site, for The Conversation and elsewhere.
Ian Biddle
Professor of Music History
I'm a cultural theorist and musicologist. I work in a range of music and sound-related areas, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries.
My work includes:
- the cultural history of music and masculinity
- theorising music's intervention in communities
- subjectivities, sound, soundscapes and urban experience
- the politics of noise
I'm interested in:
- memory studies
- sound studies
- Italian workerist and autonomist theory
- psychoanalysis and theoretical approaches to 'affective' states
I'm co-founder and co-ordinating editor (with Richard Middleton) of the journal Radical Musicology.
William Edmondes
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Performance
William Thomas Gustav Edmondes is the full 'real' name of the artist and performer variously known as Gwilly Edmondez, Gustav Thomas, Copydex, Virginia Pipe and more. As a composer-performer my primary materials are:
- voice
- recorded media
- sampling & sequencing
I also work with 8-bit Techno (Gameboy with Nanoloop), online video and drawing; my primary aesthetic is Wild Pop.
I'm one half of the duo YEAH YOU with Elvin Brandhi; and publish (and posts on his Claws & Tongues page) extra-academic critical musicology and other writings as Gustav Thomas, my middle names and the first names of my grandfathers, which also indicates his background as half-Welsh, half-Slovene.
I teach Contemporary Music Practice at all three stages alongside historical-cultural musicology options on Hip Hop, Jazz, Fringe Cultures and Underground/Experimental Popular Music.
Richard Elliott
Senior Lecturer in Music
I'm a cultural musicologist with a particular interest in popular musics of the world.
My research interests are wide but mostly connect to ways in which music reflects and produces time, space and memorable objects.
My early work explored the roles played by loss, memory, nostalgia and revolution in popular music. This was heavily influenced by theories of place and spatiality.
Another ongoing theme in my work is the various ways in which music creates or evokes ‘memory places’ that take on significance for individuals and communities.
Nancy Kerr Elliott
Lecturer in Folk and Traditional Music
I'm a folk educator with over 25 years’ teaching experience in both formal and informal education settings. I've led workshops and choirs and taught 1:1 at festivals, residential courses, schools and universities in the UK, Australia, Canada, Europe and Asia.
My music psychotherapy background informs my practice as a facilitator of client-led music-making throughout the lifespan.
Subject areas include:
- Creative Practice Research
- Traditions of these Islands
- Folk Ensemble
- Applied Songwriting & Composition (Folk & Modal)
- Folk Music, Gender & Identity
Paul Fleet
My Chair recognises the work I have contributed and continue to contribute to the discovery and impact in Authentic Music Education as a global educator, author, and speaker.
Authentic Music Theory supports a discipline which places education into vocational and practical contexts, while protecting those contexts’ critical and theoretical dimensions.
I'm an experienced leader across Higher Education with professional recognition as an Advance HE National Teaching Fellow (2021) and a Principal Fellow of the HEA. I'm also a Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Reviewer, an Advance HE qualified trainer for their professional development course for External Examiners, and a mentor/coach for colleagues in their professional educational development across the various disciplines. I'm also husband to Nathalie, and father to two amazing kids (Belle and Evan).
Bennett Hogg
Senior Lecturer
Current Work
- composing music for release with Arts Council of England funded book with Mike Collier, Geoff Sample, and Alex Charrington - also writing a chapter for this book.
- commission for new work for Icelandic early music group Nordic Affect.
- commission for ten-string guitar piece for CD release in 2019 by Stefan Ostersjo.
- co-investigator on "Bee-ing Human", Leverhulme Trust three-year funded interdisciplinary research project on Charles Butler's The Feminine Monarchie. This is a 17th-century book on bees and beekeeping.
- co-investigator (Newcastle University lead) on Sonic Intangibles, a two-year joint UKRI-funded interdisciplinary project exploring data sonification.
- Co-editor of special issue of Seismograf, a Danish music and sound art journal specialising in the innovatory "audio paper" format.
- Director of Landscape Quartet - formerly an AHRC-funded environmental sound art project.
- Curator and producer of sound art and music for Cheeseburn Grange Sculpture Gardens, Stamfordham, Northumberland.
- co-editing with Matthew Sansom a new edited issue of Contemporary Music Review - "Music, Sound, and Landscape" - now in press
Nanette De Jong
Professor of Socially Engaged Ethnomusicology
My work has focussed primarily on Caribbean music, Black American jazz, and African-diasporic identity.
I continue to publish in these areas (most recently as editor of the Cambridge Companion of Caribbean Music); however, after receiving a Fulbright Fellowship to South Africa (in 2006), my research expanded to also include Southern Africa.
Given that region’s high rate of HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence (GBV), my work turned towards matters of health, gender inequality, and music-based advocacy. My most recent research divided between:
Social-engagement pursuits
I act as an ethnomusicologist-consultant for various communities, NGOs, and local organisations in Southern Africa.
Scholarly pursuits
My more recent publications reflect this social-engagement work and is often written in collaboration with members of those communities.
Through the years, I have collaborated with over 180 NGOs (non-government organisations), NPOs (non-profit organisations), and government offices. Together, we have implemented dozens of arts-based interventions, strengthened policy frameworks around health and gender equality, and organised training programmes to prepare women and youths for employment in the cultural sector.
Rob Mackay
Senior Lecturer in Composition
My main area of research is in electroacoustic composition and sound art.
Recent projects have moved towards a more cross-disciplinary approach, including:
- theatre
- text in performance
- audiovisual installation work
- acoustic ecology, and
- human-computer interaction
My work has gained international recognition in the form of prizes and honours, and my pieces are performed regularly worldwide (including several performances on BBC Radio 3).
Matthew Ord
Lecturer
My research applies a cultural-historical approach to the intersection of ideology and musical practice in British folk and popular music. In 2017 I completed my AHRC-funded PhD thesis which combined ethnographic and desk-based research to explore the cultural significance of sound recording in the British post-war folk revival.
I'm interested in the role of recording and other media technologies in folk music cultures. I've published chapters on the role of recording within the British folk-rock movement, and on the media activism of the songwriter Ewan MacColl.
In December 2017 I was appointed postdoctoral fellow on an AHRC Creative Engagement project on the development of music tourism in Scotland. I am currently preparing articles on contemporary English folk field recordings, and on theories of cultural transmission in folk music historiography. In addition to my research activities, I remain an active musician with significant professional experience as a singer and guitarist in a range of folk and popular styles.
Julia Partington
Senior Lecturer
My research interests include the potential benefits of music education in early childhood as a means to address disadvantage and promote the wellbeing of children and families in challenging circumstances.
My doctoral thesis is centred on collaborative approaches for teachers and visiting musicians working in primary music classrooms. It aims to empower primary class teachers in terms of their own musical confidence and skills.
Mariam Rezaei
Senior Lecturer in Music Technology and Composition
My professional expertise and innovation informs my university teaching. The most clear example of this has been my delivery of an innovative DJ Skills and Turntablism undergraduate course, MUS2016. Unique in its perspective, the hybrid course brings together performance skills in vinyl and digital DJing skills with creative composition.
Most DJ courses are limited to teaching only DJing beatmatching with digital kit or CDJs. Reflective of my personal research achievements, this unique course is world-leading in innovative turntable composition pedagogy.
Larry Zazzo
Senior Lecturer in Music
I joined Newcastle University in 2017 and continue to perform in concert halls and opera houses globally. I've made over 25 recordings of rarely-performed Baroque vocal masterpieces as well as premiering new works by the likes of:
- Thomas Adès
- Jonathan Dove
- Missy Mazzoli
- Iain Bell
- Rolf Riehm, and
- Geoff Page
In addition to my ongoing research into Baroque opera and oratorio, performer wellbeing, historical performance practice, and opera libretto authorship recognition, my recent world-premiere recordings include:
- Jonathan Dove's dramatic cantata for countertenor, Hojoki, with the BBC Philharmonic (Orchid Classics), and
- Baroque Gender Stories, a collaboration with mezzo soprano Vivica Genaux and Lautten Compagney Berlin exploring disguise and gender ambiguity in late Baroque opera (Sony Classics).
I frequently present workshops and masterclasses around the world. I recently worked with young singers at the Barock Vokal Akademie Mainz, the Utrecht Conservatoire and Capetown University's opera studio, and have been a jury member for the Cesti Voice Competition in Innsbruck, as well as a jury chair for the London Handel Singing Competition.
I also regularly give interviews in both UK and European media, such as Radio 3's The Listening Service and In Tune as well as Dutch and Croatian classical radio programmes focusing on his creative practice and musicological research.
At Newcastle, in addition to my roles as Head of Performance and Senior Tutor, I regularly lead a group of Music students in a year-long module, Performing Early Opera. In this module I conduct and direct fully-staged, historically-informed performances of Baroque dramatic works. These include Handel's Acis and Galatea and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Fairy Queen at the Tyne Theatre and Opera House and at Seaton Delaval Hall.