WRoCAH is delighted to have awarded funding to two new research networks that will recruit 3 doctoral research students each for start in October 2015.
Click here for information on how to apply for these studentships
Expressive nonverbal communication in ensemble performance
NETWORK LEAD: Dr Renee Timmers, Department of Music, University of Sheffield
Research into music performance has always relied on and benefited from technical innovations. A major boost was given by the rise of MIDI technology allowing detailed recording of timing, dynamics and articulation in MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) instruments (generally keyboard). The increasing availability of audio analysis tools has opened possibilities to investigate performances from audio recordings paving the way for historical and contemporary databases of recordings to be analyzed with the constraint that different audio sources (e.g. different voices and instruments) cannot be separated. This reliance on technical innovations has however pigeon-holed performance analysis within two categories of academia: a computer-driven approach tackling large data sets using machine-learning techniques and a qualitative and small scale data analysis approach driven by performers and musicologists. This Network will bridge the gap across these disciplines, using digital transformation to fully integrate the approaches from the arts and sciences to provide meaningful research outcomes for theory and practice. Moreover, building on recent innovations, it will push forward the investigation of expressive communication in ensemble performance countering the existing focus on either solo performance or the ensemble outcome as a whole.
| University | Studentship Topic | Principal Supervisor | Co-Supervisor |
| Leeds | Movement and sonic gestures in ensemble performance and audience responses. | Dr Kia Ng School of Music, Leeds |
Professor Guy Brown Department of Computer Science, Sheffield |
| Sheffield | Teaching and learning of ensemble coordination | Dr Renee Timmers Department of Music, Sheffield |
Dr Catherine Laws Department of Music, York |
| York | Achieving excellence in ensemble singing | Dr Helena Daffern Department of Electronics, York |
Dr Freya Bailes School of Music, Leeds |
NETWORK LEAD: Professor Mary Vincent, Department of History, Sheffield
Beyond Charlie: Anticlericalism and Freedom of the Press
The Paris attacks on 7 January 2015 make this an apposite moment to assess the deep cultural and historical links between iconoclastic thought and freedom of the press in western Europe. The proposed network will reassess anticlerical print culture and ideas of free speech, taking as its starting point the Hébertiste tradition of radical and scabrous political satire, a tradition in which Charlie Hebdo clearly stands. Though part of a wider secularist tradition, this populist—and often deliberately provocative—strand of anticlerical transmission should be distinguished from literary forms or those rooted in social and political movements.
| University | Studentship Topic | Principal Supervisor | Co-Supervisor |
| Leeds | Anticlericalism and secularism as a form of political communication in popular periodical print culture | Dr Richard Cleminson School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, Leeds |
Dr John Steel Department of Journalism Studies, Sheffield |
| Sheffield | The relationship between the polemic and ideological traditions of anticlericalism aimed at Catholicism and contemporary polemic aimed at Islam | Professor Mary Vincent Department of History, Sheffield |
Dr Claire Chambers Department of English and Related Literature, York |
| York | The role of the graphic press as a means of political communication and the importance of political humour, obscenity and the ‘freedom to offend’ | Dr Geoff Cubitt Department of History, York |
Dr Valerie Mainz School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, Leeds |