In the broadest terms our research can be grouped into five key subdisciplines:

• Historical and cultural musicology (Biddle, Bentley, Clarke, de Jong, Elliott, Fleet, Gibson, Hogg, Plastino, Williamson, Zazzo)
• Popular, vernacular and folk traditions (Behr, de Jong, Elliott, Edmondes, Kerr, Macdonald, Ord, Plastino, Rezaei)
• Ethnomusicology and Global Musics (Clarke, de Jong, Elliott, Plastino);
• Early Music (Gibson, Williamson, Zazzo);
• Creative practice (Edmondes, Hogg, Kerr, Macdonald, Mackay, Macdonald, Rezaei, Williamson, Zazzo)

A more granular description might group our research into the following themes:

• Improvisation, grooves & beats (Edmondes, Hogg, Rezaei)
• Composition and analysis (Clarke, Fleet, Begg, Hogg, Macdonald, Edmondes, Mackay, Rezaei, Tarrant)
• Politics, policy, social impact (Behr, de Jong)
• Gender & sexuality (Biddle, Gibson, Kerr, Macdonald, de Jong)
• The voice (Biddle, Elliott, Zazzo)
• Performance of folk and traditional music (Kerr, Macdonald)
• Performance of classical, contemporary and early music (Tarrant, Williamson, Zazzo)
• Early music (Gibson, Williamson, Zazzo)
• Indian music (Clarke)
• Music and Consciousness (Clarke)
• Mediterranean music (Plastino)
• Caribbean and African musics (de Jong)
• Vernacular music of north-east England, Borders, Scotland and Shetland (Kerr, Macdonald)
• Jazz (Edmondes, Elliott, de Jong, Plastino)
• Urban musicology (Behr, Biddle, Elliott, de Jong)
• Migration, space mobility, space & place, landscape (Bentley, Biddle, Hogg, de Jong, Mackay)
• Popular music studies (Edmondes, Elliott, de Jong, Plastino)
• Phonography & sound studies (Biddle, Elliott)
• Musical materials and sources (Bentley, Cross, Fleet, Gibson, Williamson, Zazzo)
• Music Heritage (Macdonald, Williamson)

For more detailed information please consult the individual staff profiles.

How the above themes coalesce into projects, often interdisciplinary or interinstitutional, or both, can be seen in our recent research projects:

• Early English Church Music (Williamson)
• Flight of the Monarch (Mackay)
• Singer Wellbeing and Covid-19 (Zazzo, Behr)
• Tudor Partbooks (Williamson, with J Craig-McFeely of Oxford University)
• The UK Live Music Census (Behr, with M Brennan of Edinburgh University, M Cloonan of Glasgow University, E Webster from Edinburgh University)

You may also wish to see our completed projects.  

Our research environment is enhanced by our seminar series, by one-off conferences, by our special events (example here) and by distinguished visitors, such as Joel Sachs, Trisha Rose, Valentina Sandu-Dediu, Marina Frolova-Walker, Katherine Roberts-Parker and many others. We thank Newcastle University Research Committee for funding the visit of Prof John Milsom in 2015, and we are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for sponsoring Dr Kerry McCarthy's visiting professorship in 2017 and Dr Lawrence Davies's early-career fellowship to 2022.

For more information, use the navigation menu to the left (or above, on mobile devices).