Postgraduate Music 2026-2027

This course provides students with an opportunity to reflect on and develop their own research practices. Engaging with topics and methods relevant to all six of the MMus study paths (community music, composition, music education, musicology, performance, and sonic arts) the course will encourage students to engage with both novel and well-established approaches to music studies.

As different cultures and nations have come into contact through European colonialism and globalisation, so too have their musics. In this course, we will approach the issue of cultural encounter through the prism of music, and music’s ability to represent and to bring into dialogue different cultural identities. ‘Music, Representation and Cultural Encounters’ will adopt a cross-disciplinary approach examining current scholarship in musicology, ethnomusicology and popular music studies. In the course, we will encounter a number of familiar (and not so familiar) repertoires and genres, including opera/western art music, jazz, popular music, Mediterranean and North African genres.

This course will explore practices and research from the fields of music, therapy, public health and medicine, to rigorously explore the relationship between music, health and wellbeing.

Students will be supported to undertake a range of self-directed research-based activities to develop a community music-based intervention in an area of their own interest.

This course enables students to be creative in developing their own independent and individual ideas through an extended music research project in their chosen area of study, resulting in a substantial piece of original work. They will acquire a range of skills, techniques and understanding enabling them to become effective researchers. The exact nature of the project is the result of negotiation between supervisor (or supervisory team) and student, subject to the approval of the programme coordinator.

This course provides students with an applied understanding of research communication skills relevant to all six study paths (community music, composition, music education, musicology, performance, and sonic arts).  Students will engage directly with current issues in music research, experiencing and critiquing different methods of written, recorded, and oral communication. The course is structured around the departmental Music Research Seminars, but students are also expected to attend other seminar and/or events relevant to their own research practice.

This course enables students to be creative in developing their own independent and individual ideas through an extended music research project in their chosen area of study, resulting in a piece of original work. They will acquire a range of skills, techniques and understanding enabling them to become effective researchers. The exact nature of the project is the result of negotiation between supervisor (or supervisory team) and student, subject to the approval of the programme coordinator.