Birmingham Conservatoire : Research Staff

Research Staff

Our research staff include a number of eminent composers and performers as well as scholars, who embrace a wide range of specialisms.

Research Degrees Coordinator: Dr Christopher Dingle
Staff Research Coordinator and Professor of Music: Professor Ronald Woodley
Research Administrator: Liz Reeve
Senior Researcher: Jamie Bullock
Research Assistants: Laura Hamer, David Lewis

Full-time research supervisors

• Dr Carrie Churnside specialises in music in seventeenth-century Italy, working in particular on the cantata and its contexts. She is interested in editions of unexplored repertoires and issues of performance practice.
• Lamberto Coccioli leads on the Integra - Fusing music and technology project. His compositions include the opera Magma, premiered at Ravenna in 1998, and Alúna, a viola concerto premiered at Birmingham Conservatoire with Rivka Golani (solo viola) in 2005.
• Dr Joe Cutler is a composer specialising in music for the concert hall and cross-genre collaborations with visual artists, film, theatre and dance.
• Dr Christopher Dingle is the author/editor of three recent books on Messiaen. He specialises in French music, music criticism and 20th century performance practice.
• Dr Janet K Halfyard has published on film music, Buffy studies, has edited a book on Berio and is a versatile contemporary music vocalist.
• Dr Simon Hall is a composer specialising in the interaction of acoustic instruments with live electronics and electroacoustic composition for multi-channel fixed media.
• Dr Shirley Thompson has prepared numerous articles on and editions of French Baroque music, with emphasis on Marc-Antoine Charpentier's notation and performance practice.
• Michael Wolters is a composer specialising in multimedia collaborations as well as music for concert hall, TV and film. His work focuses especially on structural and performative approaches.
• Professor Ronald Woodley is the director of the Centre for Music and Performance. He specialises in late medieval music theory, 20th century performance studies and Steve Reich. He is also a clarinettist and chamber pianist.

Part-time research supervisors

The Conservatoire also employs a large number of part-time staff, many of whom are internationally known composers or performers.