Conferences & events
I collaborate with others to convene events such as conferences, panels, and networking meet ups. I do this across music and related disciplinary areas, such as philosophy and cultural theory.
Read my full profile here.
Ongoing activities
Music and Philosophy
Study Group of the Royal Musical Association
The Royal Musical Association Music and Philosophy Study Group (MPSG) aims to provide a distinctive, long-term forum for those with an interest in music and philosophy to share and discuss work, in the hope of furthering dialogue in this area.
I was elected to the organising committee of the MPSG as Events Coordinator in 2022.
London Conference in Critical Thought
Annual transdisciplinary conference
LCCT is a free, annual conference, that embraces transdisciplinary thought and collaboration, particularly across the arts and humanities. Each LCCT includes c. 100 presentations.
As part of the London Critical Collective, I convened the following conferences: LCCT 2023, London Metropolitan University; LCCT 2022, Birkbeck, University of London; LCCT 2019, Centre for Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths, UoL; LCCT 2018, University of Westminster; LCCT 2016, Birkbeck, University of London; LCCT 2015, University College London, UoL; LCCT 2014, Goldsmiths, UoL; LCCT 2013, Royal Holloway, UoL; LCCT 2012, Birkbeck, UoL.
Past events
Panels, streams, and invited talks
Conferences organised
Music and Materialisms Conference
A free one-day conference (Feb. 2019), Kingston University London.
This conference brought together speakers on the topics of music, material culture, and materialist theory.
Organised with Isabella van Elferen (Kingston) and Matthew Sergeant (Bath Spa)
Music in the Psychoanalytic Ear
IMR Research Day (May 2018), Senate House.
A number of scholars in music studies have recently drawn on psychoanalytic ideas to make sense of musical experiences and meaning. At the same time, there are long-established links between music therapy and psychoanalysis; a large number of psychoanalysts, analytic psychotherapists and others working in this ‘talking’ tradition have themselves considered what music might mean in light of their clinical practice. However, despite influencing one another, these disciplines tend to operate independently, with practitioners of each rarely directly engaging those across the disciplinary divides. Musicologists, music therapists, and psychoanalysts have talked about music, but rarely do they speak to one another about music. This IMR research day addresses the need for interdisciplinary dialogue by asking: what can we learn about music when these disciplines begin to speak and listen to one another?
Organised with Rachel Darnley-Smith (Roehampton). Financial support from the Guildhall School and Roehampton University.
Selected conference & seminar papers
‘Contemporary Composition and Materialist Aesthetics’ [invited talk], Berry College, GA. (October 2022).
‘Product, Process, and Sonic Fetishism’, 7th Conference of the RMA’s Music and Philosophy Study Group, Kings College London (July 2019).
‘Musical Encounters with the Object in Twentieth-Century Compositional Thought’, as part of panel ‘Music and Materialisms: Between Affect, Attitudes, and Affordances’. 54th Royal Musical Association Annual Conference, University of Bristol (Sept. 2018).
‘Reappraising Musical Materialism and the “Stuff” of Composition’ [invited talk]. Guildhall ResearchWorks Series, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, June 2018.
‘Vibrant Matter and Musical Materials’ [invited talk]. Sonic Materialities Research Series, Bath Spa University, Jan. 2018.
‘The Composition of Posthuman Bodies’. Tenth Biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900, University of Surrey, Sept. 2017.
‘Adorno’s Concept of Musical Material During and After the New Materialisms’. 6th Conference of the Royal Musical Association Music and Philosophy Study Group, King’s College London, July 2017. Also presented (as a poster presentation) at the 52nd Royal Musical Association Annual Conference, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Sept. 2016.
‘Musical Time in a Fast World’. Making Time in Music: an International Conference, University of Oxford, Sept. 2016.
‘Does the Psychoanalysis of Music Have a “Subject”?’. Annual Conference of the Royal Musical Association’s Music and Philosophy Study Group, King’s College, University of London, July 2015.
‘Immateriality in the Arts and Practice: Convenor’s Introduction’. London Conference in Critical Thought 2015 (Stream: ‘Immateriality in the Arts and Practice’), University College London, University of London, June 2015.
‘New York, 1983: Or, Sounding the Temporal Logic of Late Capitalism’. London Conference in Critical Thought 2014 (Stream: ‘Time Discipline’), Goldsmiths College, University of London, June 2014.
‘Silvestrov and the Symphonic Monument in Ruins’. RMA Study Day: Memory in Post-1980s Music: History, Form, Perception, University of York, Feb. 2014.
‘Musical Analysis, Dream Analysis: Silvestrov’s String Quartet No. 1’. RMA Music and Psychoanalysis Study Day, University of Liverpool, Nov. 2013. Also presented (in an extended form) at Transformations of Musical Modernism International Seminar, Centre Franco-Norvégian en Sciences Sociales et Humaines, Paris, Oct. 2011.
‘The Object(s) of Musical Experience: Potentials for Cross-Disciplinary Dialogues’. London Conference in Critical Thought 2012 (Stream: ‘The Object – Between Time and Temporality’), Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities, University of London, June 2012.
‘Building an Instrument, Building an Instrumentalist: Helmut Lachenmann’s Serynade for Solo Piano’. Symposium for Performance of Electronic and Experimental Composition: “Building an Instrument”, University of Oxford, Jan. 2012.