Voices for Change in the Classical Music Profession
New Ideas for Tackling Inequalities and Exclusions
Anna Bull, Christina Scharff, and with Associate Editor Laudan Nooshin
Author Information
Anna Bull, Lecturer in Education and Social Justice, University of York, Christina Scharff, Reader in Gender, Media, and Culture, King's College London, and with Associate Editor Laudan Nooshin, Professor of Music, City, University London
Anna Bull is Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at the University of York. A former professional pianist and cellist, her research interests include class and gender inequalities in classical music education and staff sexual misconduct in higher education. Her monograph Class, Control, and Classical Music (2019) was joint winner of the 2020 British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Award. Anna is also a co-founder and director of The 1752 Group, a research and campaigning organisation working to address staff sexual misconduct in higher education. She has worked with music education charity Sound Connections on youth voice in classical music education, publishing a toolkit for teachers in 2022. Christina Scharff is Reader in Gender, Media, and Culture at King's College London. She is author and co-editor of several books, including Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work: The Classical Music Profession (2018). Dr. Scharff's research on the classical music profession,
funded by the ESRC and British Academy, has contributed to our understanding of inequalities in the cultural and creative industries, the subjective experiences of precarious work, and the psychic life of neoliberalism. Dr. Scharff's other area of expertise is in engagements with feminism, building on her first monograph Repudiating Feminism: Young Women in a Neoliberal World (2012). Laudan Nooshin is Professor of Music at City, University London, having previously taught at Brunel University and Goldsmiths University of London, where she gained her PhD in Ethnomusicology in 1996. Laudan's research interests include creative processes in Iranian music, music and youth culture in Iran, music and gender, urban music studies, and music in Iranian cinema. She is a co-founder and currently co-Chair of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies Network and she is also a Vice-President of the Royal Musical Association in which role she leads the RMA EDI Working Group.
Contributors:
Deborah Annetts is Chief Executive of the Independent Society of Musicians and Chair of the Educational Recording Agency.
Charlotte Armstrong is a postdoctoral researcher and visiting lecturer at the University of York.
Vick Bain is a consultant and campaigner for diversity and inclusion in the music industry and President Elect of the Independent Society of Musicians.
Brandon Keith Brown is a conductor, activist, teacher, and laureate of the 2012 Sir Georg Solti International Conductors' Competition.
Anna Bull is Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at the University of York.
Clementina Casula is Assistant Professor of Sociology of economic and labor processes at the University of Cagliari, Italy.
Chris Collins is Chair in Music and Head of the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen and a member of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the Royal Musical Association.
Antonio C. Cuyler is Director of the MA Program and Associate Professor of Arts Administration in the Department of Art Education at Florida State University (FSU) and Visiting Associate Professor of Theatre & Drama in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan.
Brandon Farnsworth works as an independent music curator based in Berlin, and as a research associate at the Zurich University of the Arts.
Anthony Gray is Head of Programme at Fuel Productions Ltd in London.
Beth Higham-Edwards is a percussionist who has performed at The National Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe, and she teaches percussion at Junior Trinity Laban.
Quodesia "Quo" Johnson is Education and Company Culture Manager of The Dallas Opera, Interim Social Justice Advisor of OPERA America, racial equity coach of Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, and founder and space moderator of Black Administrators of Opera.
Vinota Karunasaagarar was Creative Content and Publications Manager at the Independent Society of Musicians. She now works freelance as a publications consultant and continues to work for the Independent Society of Musicians in this capacity.
Maiko Kawabata is Lecturer in Music at Royal College of Music and Staff Tutor in Music at Open University.
Hannah Kendall is a composer and Doctoral Fellow in composition at Columbia University.
Kristina Kolbe is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Sociology Department at the University of Amsterdam.
Beata M. Kowalczyk is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sociology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and Associated Researcher at the Institutions et Dynamiques Historiques de l'Économie et de la Société (Paris 1 Panthéone Sorbonne).
Rosanna Lovell is a musician, educator, performer, radio maker, and sound artist based in Berlin.
Gillian Moore is Director of Music and Performing Arts at London's Southbank Centre.
Patricia Ann Neely is a founding member of the viol consort Parthenia, and currently Director of Abendmusik, New York's Period Instrument String Band.
Laudan Nooshin is Professor of Music at City, University London.
Chi-chi Nwanoku is the Founder and Artistic and Executive Director of the Chineke! Foundation, founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Professor of Double Bass Historical Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, where she was made a Fellow in 1998.
Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey is Director of Performance at St Catherine's College (University of Oxford), Conducting Fellow of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, and Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.
Jennie Joy Porton is a freelance musician and teaches at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Rainer Prokop is Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Music Sociology at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria.
Rosa Reitsamer is Professor and Head at the Department of Music Sociology at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria.
Marianna Ritchey is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Eleanor Ryan is a violinist, arts educator, researcher, and currently a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, focusing on decolonising performance pedagogies in Higher Education.
Christina Scharff is Reader in Gender, Media and Culture at King's College London.
John Shortell is head of equality, diversity, and inclusion at the UK Musicians' Union.
Jon Silpayamanant is an intercultural multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music educator.
Angela Elizabeth Slater is Illuminate Women's Music Director and Professor of Composition at London Performing Academy of Music.
Oliver Vibrans has composed music for the concert hall, theatre, film, art installations, and radio.
Caitlin Vincent is on faculty at the University of Melbourne and an affiliate member of the Centre for People, Organisation and Work at RMIT University.
David-Emil Wickström is Professor of popular music history at the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim.
Kathryn Williams is Research and Policy Officer in Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Independent Society of Musicians and a flute soloist and recording artist.
Mina Yang is Professor of arts and humanities at the Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute.
