Laura Protano-Biggs

The Music Department is delighted to welcome Laura Protano-Biggs as a Research Associate.

Laura comes to Nottingham from the University of California, Berkeley, where she wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled Musical Materialities in Liberal Italy. Her PhD examines various innovations in Italian musical culture in the final three decades of the nineteenth-century, including the establishment of the baton conductor and the introduction of electric illumination at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala.

At Nottingham Laura turns her attention to the London musical scene in the late 1840s and ‘50s, when French grand opéra became fashionable there for the first time. Drawing on her interest in theatrical technologies, she will examine how machinery at the London opera houses was used to enhance the appeal of these works.

At the UC Berkeley, Laura taught a range of courses and in the final year of her PhD held an appointment as a Visiting Lecturer in Music at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Having been born and educated in England (BA Hons and MPhil, University of Cambridge), she is excited to be experiencing academia in the UK once again.