PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Stephen is Professor of Music and Head of the Music Department at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has led collaborative projects with the British Library including Early Music Online and A Big Data History of Music. He uses methods from book history, social history and the digital humanities to understand how music travelled between communities, and to illuminate attitudes to the printing and scribal copying of music in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

CO-INVESTIGATOR

Kirsten is Professor of Early Modern Music and Culture at Newcastle University. Her research investigates early modern English music in wider cultural, social and political contexts. Her co-edited books include Masculinity and Western Musical Practice, Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300–1918, and Music in North-East England, 1500–1800. Kirsten leads the project’s activities at Newcastle University and is investigating aspects of music book ownership and use revealed in local archives.

CO-INVESTIGATOR

Winner of BBC Folk Singer of the Year in 2015, Nancy is a performer, composer, educator and community musician with over 25 major releases in her discography. She is Lecturer in Folk and Traditional Music at Newcastle University. With her ensemble the Melrose Quartet, Nancy is developing creative responses to the music and stories uncovered by our project. She is leading performances for summer festivals and BBC broadcasts, as well as running educational workshops and creating learning resources.

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSISTANT, ROYAL HOLLOWAY

Caro is leading the project’s work in archives in southern England and the southern Midlands, with a particular interest in sources that witness marginalised voices in music history. Caro gained their PhD at Royal Holloway in 2023 with a thesis on music at exiled English convents. In Autumn 2023, they were Visiting Research Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University, examining the Blount Music Collection. They direct an early music ensemble, the Basilinda Consort, dedicated to exploring the musical lives of English Christian women religious. 

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY

Steph is leading the project’s work in archives in the far north of England including County Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire and Northumberland. As a qualified archivist, she brings a wealth of experience around archive collections and cataloguing. Her wider research interests focus on musical and print cultures in early modern England, including music ownership, circulation and the commercial music trade. Her co-edited books include Music in North-East England, 1500–1800 and The Regional Music Trade in Britain, 1650–1800.

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY

Andrew is leading the project’s work in archives in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the north west. Andrew holds qualifications from the Universities of Melbourne, Oxford and University College London, and is winner of the 2022 IAML E. T. Bryant Memorial Prize. He is also Lecturer in Music at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, and is active as a pianist, harpsichordist and music editor. His research interests focus on sources of central European music of the 18th century, including sources of continental music and continental composers preserved in English local archives.