About

As a leader, I am driven by collaboration and a desire to co-create diverse ways of understanding the arts and humanities.

Such thinking is central to the Women in Global Music Research and Industry Network (WIGM), which I co-founded in 2020 with Yvonne Liao. This network, initially funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 894071, pioneers women’s musical creativity across geographies and through the ages. It facilitates a range of in-person events, most recently Finding a Voice at the University of California, Irvine (2024), alongside online panels and discussion groups. Enquiries for potential collaborations are warmly encouraged.

Over the last decade, I have co-/chaired five international conferences, all promoting inclusive dialogues across performance, scholarship, and public engagement. These include: Schubert as Dramatist (2014), under the auspices of the Oxford International Song Festival (formerly the Oxford Lieder Festival); Clara Schumann (née Wieck) and her World (2019), in association with The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, TORCH; and Women at the Piano 1848–1970 (2023), a collaboration with Illuminations: The Chancellor’s Arts and Culture Initiative and the Humanities Center: Building Intellectual Community at the University of California, Irvine.

My passion for collaboration is the driving force behind my editorial projects. I am the co-/editor of five volumes: Clara Schumann Studies (2021), the first in the Cambridge Composer Studies to be devoted to a woman; Drama in the Music of Franz Schubert (2019), together with Clara and Robert Schumann in Context (2025) and two volumes on the global history of women pianists (in preparation).

At the institutional level, I have championed diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as the Undergraduate Admissions Coordinator for the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford (2018–19), as well as through serving on the Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team at Oxford (2018–20); the Council of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (2019–21); the Schubert Institute United Kingdom (2019–); and the Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century Studies Oxford Network (2013–16).

In 2024, I was elected to a three-year term as Chair of the Schubert Institute United Kingdom.

As a writer, I prioritize spaces for reflection and remembrance, both through the subject matter and the experiences that readers may bring to the topics. While I have long been fascinated by artistic portrayals of and responses to mortality, it wasn’t until the sudden death of my father that the realities of the subject matter hit home. Tropes I had been imagining at a distance – references to the past, evocations of alternate realities – suddenly felt closer to hand than ever before. Loss, I came to appreciate, had heightened my thinking about the impact of death on creative endeavor, and encouraged me to listen again in the gaps between presence and absence, sound and silence.

My monograph The Gothic Imagination in the Music of Franz Schubert (2024) distils my fascination with strangeness in Schubert’s music – from irreconcilable contrasts to intimations of the sublime and the grotesque – vis-à-vis gothic trends in literature and the visual arts. It thus challenges the well-worn notions of Schubert as a happy-go-lucky composer, or a clairvoyant spinning out endless melodies, and repositions his work within prevailing discourses of the time. Just as the gothic prioritizes open-endedness, a blurring of where things begin and close, so this book likewise encourages a blurring of boundaries – new ways of thinking about gothic expression across music and the arts.

I am currently writing about widowhood as a catalyst for women’s musical creativity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This research shifts the emphasis from widowhood as a time of loss, to a period of renewal and rediscovery, with case studies ranging from Clara Schumann to Amy Beach and Carrie Jacobs-Bond. In doing so, it recenters loss as a vehicle for humanizing music-historical narratives and for locating traces of creativity in unexpected places.

Recent essays include: “Women, Pianos, and Virtuosity” in The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers (2024); “Franz Schubert, Death, and the Gothic” in Schubert’s Piano (2024); and “Diaries and Letters” in The Oxford Handbook of Musical Biography and Life-Writing (forthcoming).

As an educator, I strive to create spaces for embracing dreams, and for learning “how to think, not what to think”. My teaching is guided by my deep belief that training in music and the liberal arts produces well-rounded critical thinkers who approach challenges in creative ways. I encourage students to be bold and dynamic – but above all, to infuse the learning process with kindness and respect for one another. Together we embark on a journey of co-creation – learning from each other while developing imaginative ways of studying music and the arts.

My courses are tailored to diverse learning styles and life experiences. One example is my undergraduate module “Women at the Piano”, which I developed in tandem with the international conference Women at the Piano 1848–1970 at the University of California, Irvine (2023). This course explores women pianists around the globe – from Europe to the Americas and Asia Pacific. While pursuing this journey, we reimagine the history of piano culture across music history, performance, pedagogy, and public engagement, with assessments ranging from designing concert programs and pre-concert lectures, to reflective projects that connect students’ own artistry to wider cultural-historical discourses. The first cohort of students played a central role in the conference through an all-student recital of music by women.

I have taught across the spectrum of music studies: from the inaugural Foundation Year at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (now a university-wide scheme that prepares students from underrepresented backgrounds for higher education), through undergraduate and postgraduate seminars and supervision at Oxford, Maynooth University, and the University of California, Irvine. I serve on several PhD committees and welcome enquiries from potential mentees (both postgraduate and postdoctoral).