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 12^th century to the present, and the music of Latin America, the Middle East, South and South East Asia, and West Africa.

For 2025/26 entry, we welcome applications for PhDs in all supervisory areas.

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.

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).
• 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:

• The Invention of Lightness, Or, Musical Politics of 1920s Italy

Joint PhDs available: opportunities exist to gain a joint PhD with Hong Kong University.

Our department forms part of the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP), which offers Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) studentships (www.lahp.ac.uk)

Head of Department: Dr Katherine Schofield

Head of PhD Programme: Dr Flora Willson