In early January 2026, Birmingham became a vibrant meeting point for emerging music scholars and creative practitioners, as the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and the Royal Musical Association welcomed researchers from across the UK and beyond for the BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference (6–8 January 2026). Hosted at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, the three-day event offered an inspiring programme of research papers, lecture-recitals, practice-based presentations, and professional development sessions — showcasing the intellectual energy and originality of postgraduate music research today.
Among the contributors were University of Birmingham researchers, whose presentations reflected the breadth and vibrancy of postgraduate scholarship within the university. The conference itself brought together over 140 student presenters working across a wide range of disciplines and methodological approaches, from ethnomusicology and archival studies to performance, analysis, and cultural history. In such a stimulating and diverse academic environment, it was a real privilege to see UoB students sharing their work on this national platform.
Conference presentations represent a vital stage in academic development — not simply as a ‘performance’ of results, but as an active process of shaping and refining research through intellectual exchange. For doctoral and postgraduate researchers, presenting work-in-progress can be transformative: it allows us to test ideas in real time, learn to communicate complex arguments with clarity, and enter dialogue with scholars working in related fields.
Just as importantly, events like the BFE/RMA conference remind us that research does not take place in isolation. It flourishes through collaboration, feedback, and community. Across the three days, discussions frequently expanded beyond the sessions themselves — in corridors, coffee breaks, and informal conversations — where new ideas were sparked and future collaborations began to take shape.
UoB students contributed to this atmosphere of exchange with confident, thoughtful presentations rooted in original research. Their work explored not only musical texts and practices, but also the social and cultural worlds in which music functions — reminding us how deeply music is embedded in questions of identity, politics, community, and lived experience.
I was proud to represent the University of Birmingham with my own paper ‘Music for the Salon: John Field and the Intimate Politics of Performance in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe’. In this presentation, I explored early nineteenth-century salon culture as a powerful site of musical meaning-making, shifting the salon from a decorative background into a serious space of cultural negotiation. Rather than treating John Field’s nocturnes solely as canonical piano miniatures, I considered them as part of a broader performance ecology — shaped by intimate listening practices, salon networks, gendered ideas of musical authorship, and the cultural identity politics of early Romantic Europe. The discussion that followed reinforced how essential it is to continue examining “small” forms and domestic spaces as historically meaningful, musically generative, and socially influential.
Another UoB contribution came from Denise Clarke in the panel session ‘Shakespeare and Music: Time, Space, and Psyche’. Her paper, ‘Tragedy and Polarity: Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet’, offered a compelling exploration of how musical structure can enact psychological conflict. By placing Shakespearean dramaturgy alongside Tchaikovsky’s symphonic imagination, her research illuminated the ways musical narrative can function as a form of emotional and conceptual theatre — a topic that resonated strongly with the conference’s broader attention to interpretation and meaning.
A particularly valuable element of the conference was its attention to professional development and inclusive academic practice. Alongside research sessions, the programme included events on publishing, career planning, and wellbeing — as well as discussions focused on building supportive environments for postgraduate researchers at different stages of training. For many of us, it was a reminder that academic excellence is inseparable from academic sustainability: meaningful research depends on structures that support researchers as people, not just as outputs.
As I reflect on the conference, what stands out most is the confidence with which UoB researchers contributed to national academic dialogue — not only showcasing their specialisms, but helping shape the wider directions of music scholarship. Conferences like this affirm that the future of the discipline will be built through interdisciplinary thinking, intellectual openness, and research that remains connected to cultural life.
At the University of Birmingham, the Department of Music is a thriving hub for exactly this kind of work. With its vibrant community of staff and postgraduate researchers, the department supports scholarship that is historically grounded, methodologically adventurous, and socially engaged — spanning performance studies, musicology, cultural history, digital approaches, and contemporary critical perspectives. For students seeking an environment where research is both rigorous and creatively alive, UoB offers a dynamic space to develop as scholars, practitioners, and thought leaders within the musical world.
