Dr Rebecca Thumpston joins the Department of Music

Dr Rebecca Thumpston joins the Department of Music

We're very pleased to announce that Dr Rebecca Thumpston will be joining us from September as a Teaching Associate in Music and has kindly provided a brief introduction to their teaching experience and research: 

My research explores theories of agency and embodiment in post 1900 music, with a specific focus on cello repertoire. I am the editor, with Nicholas Reyland, of Music, Analysis, and the Body: Experiments, Explorations, and Embodiments (Peeters, 2018) and I have published on agency in the music of Elgar, Britten and Simon Holt. I am currently working on my first monograph, Agency, Embodiment and the Twentieth-Century Cello, and an invited book chapter titled ‘Dancing and Praying: Embodying Julian Anderson’s Strings’. I am interested more broadly in 20th-century British musical culture; my next major project explores the pioneering careers and identities of female British cellists in the early 20th century.

I am looking forward to joining Nottingham University’s Music Department to develop innovative research-led teaching in musicology and performance. In my teaching I encourage students to think about music in new and creative ways, for example, encouraging students to examine how attention to embodiment and musical bodies can enhance their creative practices as performers, composers, theorists and analysts. I have previously taught at Keele University and the Royal Northern College of Music.

Dr Rebecca Thumpston