Practice-based research focuses on composition, performance and improvisation.
Areas of musicological and theoretical inquiry can include the following approaches:
- cultural and critical
- historiographic
- ethnomusicological
- music analytical
- philosophical and aesthetic
If you choose to engage in academic research you are normally assessed by a thesis of no more than 100,000 words for PhD and 50,000 words for MPhil, inclusive of notes, bibliography and appendices. If you choose to undertake practice-base research you will normally submit a portfolio (eg of scores, sound files, video files, other forms of documentation or some combination of these), supplemented by a related dissertation to explain the larger, practice-based component.
Applications are welcome from students with academic or practice-based research interests in any field of expertise among our staff. To view the areas that we are able to supervise please see the ICMuS Research Website, as well as individual staff pages.
You will join a wider community of fellow postgraduate students working in the International Centre for Music Studies (ICMuS), and more widely in the School of Arts and Cultures and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. ICMuS also holds regular PhD/MPhil forums for students to discuss their research.
All PhD students are given the opportunity to undertake some undergraduate teaching, with appropriate mentoring, at a suitable point in their study.
Delivery
These programmes are delivered on the Newcastle campus (with options for a period of study abroad). You will be assigned a principal supervisor, supported by a wider supervisory team of one or more additional supervisors. In the first year, you will complete the Faculty of Humanities and Social SciencesÕ Doctoral Research Training Programme. Beyond this, study is based on one to one tutorials with your supervisors, which can be flexibly scheduled. A blended approach of in-person and web-based supervision can also be negotiated for students studying remotely.
