What do you do with a PhD in Music?

PhD student Jessica Beck sheds some light on the musical past of Conway Hall.

by Jessica Beck On Sunday 17 February I had the opportunity to give a pre-concert talk to a delightful audience at Conway Hall. For those who attended, this blog offers a reduced recap of my discussion, and thank you again for coming! If you couldn’t make it, here’s a little look at what you missed. […]

This week I just about ticked off something that has been on my list for a while – I finally visited the Vegetarian Society archive in the hope of finding some connections between the London-based societies and South Place c. 1880 – 1920. Having presumed that the old London journals would now be held somewhere […]

We are nearly a quarter of the way through 2018, and so far this year has been a great one for celebrating women composers of past and present. The combined momentum from the centenary of the Representation of the People Act and International Women’s Day seems to have inspired a particularly great number of concerts […]

Summer 2017 has been a whirlwind season; as usual I haven’t spent very long in one place at a time, although I am now in the middle of a whole 10 days in Manchester! A definite highlight was my trip to Salzburg to take part in Roche Continents 2017, an annual programme put on for […]

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to spend over a week in Germany, including 6 days in Hannover. The city is a wonderful mix of old and new, my favourite example of this being the beautiful Aegidienkirche, now a war memorial after being destroyed during WWII, which you can find amidst a row of unassuming […]

Over the past year I’ve had the opportunity to present at a number of conferences, but at the end of February I added to my ‘firsts of 2017’ list by giving a pre-concert talk at Conway Hall. Preparing for the talk was slightly more tricky than usual, as I am used to having a pretty […]

This week I got to do something that I have been looking forward to for a while – I put up an exhibition! The lovely librarians at Conway Hall asked if I would like to fill the exhibition cases in the library for this term, so if you are able to stop by the Conway […]

Admittedly, it has been a while since my last post, but I have a fairly legitimate excuse. Since my return from Poland, I have been in a small bubble of conference organisation and literature review writing. Consequently, whenever I attempted to write a blog post, my mind was screaming ‘LITERATURE REVIEW! LITERATURE REVIEW!’ as if […]

On 5 November, I headed to Poland a couple of days in advance of the ‘Young Musicology Today: Tendencies, Challenges and Perspectives’ conference, which took place at Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest universities in the world. I didn’t get off to a great start. After three hours of sleep, a flight and a short train […]

Since my last post, a lot of my energy has been directed towards organising the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Programme Annual Postgraduate Conference (just slips right off the tongue, doesn’t it…). The event will host student papers, workshops led by students, workshops led by professionals, posters and, naturally, plenty of food and drink to […]

Anyone who has seen the musical Avenue Q may recognise the title of my blog from the first line of the opening song, ‘What do you do with a BA in English?’. While this may have been sung with a slightly ironic tone, the question about my PhD was one that I have been asked on […]

What do you do with a PhD in Music?

The Ethical Society at War: How World War One changed the South Place Sunday Concerts

Vegetarians and Ethical Societies

Ethel Smyth

Salzburg Arts Festival and speaking at conferences

The Research Centre for Music and Gender

Public speaking (and a little bit of history for fun)

My first exhibition

Writing the literature review

Young Musicology Today

Josephine Troup