Graduate Research Colloquium: Dr Leah Broad (University of Oxford)

Free to attend, register via this online form.

Reviewing Ronald M. Radano and Philip V. Bohlman’s Music and the Racial Imagination (2001), Kofi Agawu wrote that ‘Only if it can be shown that musicology is the arbiter of musical taste in society is it worth expending this much energy on it.’ This talk responds to Agawu’s comment, exploring definitions and strategies of ‘public musicology’ — conducting and disseminating musical research in a way that aims to be relevant, accessible, and understandable to a target audience outside academia — and the considerations and responsibilities that come from pursuing this kind of research. In particular, I look at the possibilities presented by public musicology focused on historical women’s music, situating this within broader debates about classical music and accessibility.

Dr Leah Broad is a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford. Her group biography of four women composers — Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen — which will be published by Faber & Faber in March 2023. She is regularly on BBC radio as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, and was winner of the Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism in 2015. She has writing published and forthcoming in journals including the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Music and the Moving Image, and Music & Letters, and in books published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Boydell Press. You can follow her on Substack, and find out more about her work on her website.

About the series:
The Colloquia feature leading figures, as well as younger scholars, from across the world. They present their research in papers on all kinds of music-related topics. Graduate student Judith Valerie Engel organises the series. Presentations are followed by a discussion and drinks reception. If you would like more information, please email judith-valerie.engel@chch.ox.ac.uk.