Don't miss our weekly PhD newsletter | Sign up now Don't miss our weekly PhD newsletter | Sign up now
Creative Arts & Design (9)

  Music PhD (option of joint PhD with Hong Kong University)


  Faculty of Arts & Humanities

 Self-Funded PhD Students Only

About the Programme

For 2024/25 entry, the Music Department is only accepting applications for PhDs in Eighteenth-Century Music History and Composition.

For 2025/26 entry, we will be welcoming applications for PhDs in all supervisory areas.

The department has an international reputation for music research in history, theory, anthropology/ethnography, composition, and creative practice. We are particularly strong in film music, jazz, opera, performance studies, Western music from the 12th century to the present, and the music of Latin America, the Middle East, South and South East Asia, 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 (www.lahp.ac.uk).

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-represented in musicology, ethnomusicology, performance, and composition.

Most recent REF rankings: 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: 14.

Current number of research students: 19 FT and 15 PT.

Recent publications:

  • Picture a Day Like This [opera] (George Benjamin).
  • The Influence of Technology on Performance: Classical Perspectives (Amy Blier-Carruthers).
  • The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330 (Emma Dillon).
  • Thinking on our Feet: A Somatic Enquiry into a Haydn Minuet (Joseph Fort).
  • Paris Blues: African American Music and French Popular Culture, 1920–1960 (Andy Fry).
  • Sovereign Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Matthew Head).
  • That Man Stephen Ward [chamber opera] (Thomas Hyde).
  • Contemporary Carioca: Technologies of Mixing in a Brazilian Music Scene (Frederick Moehn).
  • Songs of Sorrow, for baritone and piano (Edward Nesbit).
  • Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India: Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858 (Katherine Schofield).
  • Music and Citizenship (Martin Stokes).
  • Listening for Realism in Charpentier’s Louise (Flora Willson).

Current research projects: 

UKRI Major Research Projects:

  • Beyond 1932—Rethinking Musical Modernity in the Middle East and North Africa;
  • Musical Lives—Towards an Historical Anthropology of French Song, 1100–1300;
  • Dissemination, Ownership, and Reading of Music in Early Modern Europe.

British Academy:

  • Sonic Diasporas —Technology and Selfhood in New York Musical Imaginaries, c. 1935–41.
  • The Invention of Lightness, Or, Musical Politics of 1920s Italy

Description

The department has an international reputation for music research in the areas of history, theory, anthropology/ethnography, composition, and creative practice. We are particularly strong in film music, jazz, opera, performance studies, Western music from the 12th century to the present, and the music of Latin America, the Middle East, South and South East Asia, and West Africa. In our PhD programmes in Music Research you will write a thesis of max. 100,000 words; in Creative Practice write a thesis of c. 50,000 words alongside a creative practice portfolio; and in Composition create a portfolio of compositions with technical commentary.

Prospective students are welcome to contact any academic member of staff whose field of research interests them. Alternatively, applicants may discuss their plans in the first instance with the Head of department Dr Katherine Schofield or the PhD programme lead Dr Flora Willson.

Joint PhD Opportunities

The joint PhD in Music with Hong Kong University affords students the opportunity to work with leaders in the fields of Ethnomusicology, Musicology and Composition. We invite applications on any area of research represented by faculty interests. We also draw your attention to areas of overlapping interest among faculty in the departments of Music at King's College London and University of Hong Kong: composition; 19th-century music studies; music and film. Students in the joint PhD programme will benefit from one-to-one supervision with a number of scholars working in their field. The programme also offers them access to the lively intellectual communities in these two world-class centres for music research, as well as to all the cultural riches on offer in the cities of London and Hong Kong.

Postgraduate training

The London Arts and Humanities Partnership offers a full and varied programme of training events to King's students, whether or not they are recipients of LAHP doctoral scholarships.

More information can be found here.


Funding Notes

Find out more information about fees on our course web page on the King’s website: View Website
Search Suggestions
Search suggestions

Based on your current searches we recommend the following search filters.