I am delighted to receive this award from my colleagues at King’s. It is an honour to be part of such a talented and supportive community in Music and to continue Thurston Dart’s vision to support new generations of musicians and scholars.
Professor Emma Dillon, Thurston Dart Professor of Music
24 February 2025
Professor Emma Dillon becomes King's Thurston Dart Professor of Music
Professor Emma Dillon is the first woman to hold the Thurston Dart Professor of Music title.
The Department of Music has announced Professor Emma Dillon as the new Thurston Dart Professor of Music in the field of Medieval Music and Cultures.
The Thurston Dart Professorship of Music at King's College London was established in 1996. It is named in honour of Thurston Dart (1921–1971), King Edward Professor of Music at the University of London and the founder of King’s Department of Music in 1964.
Professor Dillon is the first woman to hold this title and succeeds Professor Emeritus Roger Parker FBA, who held it from 2007 to 2021.
I congratulate Professor Emma Dillon on this thoroughly deserved recognition for her extraordinary work fostering a highly successful research culture in the Department of Music. Within the past few years alone, Professor Dillon has been personally recognised for her world leadership in medieval music research through two large competitive awards: a Leverhulme Major Grant (2016–19) and a European Research Council Advanced Grant (2023–28), funded through the UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee. At the same time, she has tirelessly led and supported the whole department in her role as Research Lead, and is known throughout the Faculty for her unfailingly kind and generous mentorship of many other researchers in arts and humanities.
Professor Katherine Butler Schofield, Head of the Department of Music
Professor Emma Dillon’s research focuses on European musical culture from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Her work ranges widely in terms of repertories, sources and methodological approach, and lies at the intersection of musicology, sound studies, medieval studies, and the history of material texts.
She is the Principal Investigator of Musical Lives: Towards an Historical Anthropology of French Song, 1100-1300, an interdisciplinary collaboration devoted to the study of songs, poetry and people in the medieval Mediterranean.
Professor Emma Dillon works with performers, curators, sound artists, and scholars to explore the intersections of sound, music and objects in medieval culture, and is committed to making medieval music more accessible to the public.
In this story
Thurston Dart Professor of Music (Medieval Music and Cultures)
Professor of South Asian Music and History