Since our foundation in 1964, the Department of Music at King’s has been driven by the innovative research and compositional creativity of our staff.
People have never spent more time creating and listening to music than they do today.
We make full use of music's uniquely interdisciplinary and international role. We approach this medium with the rigour and intellectual commitment of a discipline developed over thousands of years. Our work is situated at the intersection of the creative arts, humanities and social sciences. Making music is also an integral part of much of our work.
Our research projects have a vast historical range, running from the emergence of trouvère song in 12th-century France, to 18th and 19th century Indian classical music, to issues of race in 20th-century jazz. Geographically, our research expertise covers most of the globe: our members of staff research music in Europe, North America, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Our work is cross-disciplinary, engaging with a breadth of different perspectives from history, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and media studies. We explore a range of critical issues relating to race, gender, and class, and use a range of methods: ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and textual criticism.
Finally, musical performance and composition is a key part of our research. Our composers’ works are performed to national and international audiences.
As a department, we believe in the complete equality of all areas of music research, and welcome PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from all backgrounds, especially those who are currently under-represented in academic music studies. If you are interested in PhD opportunities, please visit our PGR Study page. Prospective postdoctoral researchers should contact the Department Research Lead.