Flora joined the Music Department as a Lecturer in September 2017. She read Music as an undergraduate at Selwyn College, Cambridge, then completed both an MMus and a PhD at King’s College London. She has previously held a Junior Research Fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge (2012-15) and a British Academy postdoctoral research fellowship at King's College London (2015-17).

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• 19th-century opera and operatic culture
• Music in urban and cultural history
• Music and material culture

Flora's research generally concerns changing ideas about music and how it should be produced and consumed during the 19th century. She has previously written about topics including the emergence of an operatic canon in 1860s Paris, music at the 1851 Great Exhibition, and Italian opera on the battlefields of the Crimean War. Flora has recently finished writing a book about opera’s relationship to urban infrastructure in the 1890s, which explores the role of technologies of travel and communication in shaping ideas about operatic works, institutions and singers in three major operatic centres: London, Paris and New York.

Teaching

Flora teaches undergraduate modules at all levels, mostly (but not exclusively) about aspects of 19th-century music history. She has also supervised numerous dissertations on subjects relating to opera, dance, film, and 19th-century music history. At postgraduate level, Flora enjoys convening both wide-ranging introductory modules on music research and more specialist modules about aspects of 19th-century music history and opera. She has also supervised numerous MMus dissertations on a range of historical and theoretical topics.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Alongside her academic career, Flora works as one of The Guardian’s classical music writers and is a regular guest on BBC Radio 3. She writes programme notes, gives pre-performance talks and presents events for companies including BBC Proms, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Opera Rara and the Royal Opera House. Flora also offers consultancy both on opera and 19th-century music history, and on communicating about academic music research with wider audiences.