Academic

Dr Thomson is a musicologist with a particular interest in British and Irish music of the early twentieth century, particularly Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax and the ‘Celtic North’. He is also an experienced violinist (having led the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland while at university), pianist and organist.

Dr Thomson co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams (Cambridge University Press, 2013). In 2016, he wrote and presented ‘Bax, Ireland and 1916’ for RTÉ Lyric FM’s ‘Lyric Feature’ programme, which looked at Bax’s relationship with the leaders of the Easter Rising. As part of the centenary celebrations, he also gave a public lecture in Dublin about Bax’s friendship with Pádraig Pearse.

Before coming to NUI Galway, Dr Thomson was Lecturer in Music at Queen’s University Belfast, where he taught music history, theory and analysis, and some performance. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford and Leeds.

If you wish to contact Dr Thomson, you can email him at aidan.thomson@universityofgalway.ie 

Dr Amanda Feery has been appointed as the new Lecturer in Composition with the Department of Music at NUI Galway.  Amanda Feery is a composer working with acoustic, electronic, and improvised music, having written for chamber and vocal ensembles, film, theatre, installation, and multimedia. 

Graduating from Trinity College Dublin with a degree in Music in 2006, she continued her studies in Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin, completing an M.Phil in 2009. Amanda was the Mark Nelson Fellow in Music at Princeton University, completing her PhD in Music Composition in 2019. Her research focused on Kate Bush’s song suite, The Ninth Wave. Whilst in the U.S, she formed collaborative relationships with a number of ensembles and musicians including Alarm Will Sound, Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Mise-en, Bearthoven, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and cellist Amanda Gookin. Closer to home, past collaborators include Crash Ensemble, RTÉ ConTempo Quartet, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, This is How We Fly, Chamber Choir Ireland, Dublin Guitar Quartet, Paul Roe, Michelle O’Rourke, and Lina Andonovska. 

Her work has featured at New Music Dublin, First Fortnight Festival and Dublin Fringe Festival, among others, and she has been composer-in-residence at Bang on a Can Summer Festival, SOUNDscape and Greywood Arts. Her 2019 residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais focused on recording piano improvisations on public pianos in Paris.

If you wish to contact Dr Feery, you can email her at amanda.feery@universityofgalway.ie

Ann-Marie Hanlon is a musicologist with specialisms in cultural theories of music, popular music and French modernism.

Her research in popular music focuses on the area of music and social change, and explores the ways in which music is utilised in a political sense in discourses concerning women’s rights and within queer culture in Ireland and in the U.S.. She is the project lead of Gendered Experiences of the Irish Music Industry, the first national study on how gender impacts musicians’ day-to-day experiences on the island of Ireland.

If you wish to contact Dr Hanlon, you can email her at ann-marie.hanlon@universityofgalway.ie

Patrick Lonergan is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at National University of Ireland, Galway and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He was the 2019 Burns Visiting Fellow at Boston College.  He is currently the Vice-Dean for Engagement and Student Recruitment, School of English and Creative Arts, University of Galway.

He has edited or written eleven books on Irish drama and theatre, including Theatre and Globalization (winner of the 2008 Theatre Book Prize), The Theatre and Films of Martin McDonagh (Methuen Drama, 2012), Theatre and Social Media (2015) and Irish Drama and Theatre Since 1950 (Bloomsbury, 2019).

He is on the board of directors of the Galway International Arts Festival and the Galway Music Residency, and is an Editorial Associate of Contemporary Theatre Review and a member of the editorial boards of Irish University Review and The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. 


He has lectured widely on Irish drama internationally, including recently in Princeton, Florence, Florianapolis (Brazil), Wroclaw, and Tokyo. Patrick currently co-teaches MU2105 Musical Theatre designed for our 2nd Year Music students while our 3rd Year Music students have the opportunity of availing of DT3123 Musical Theatre: History and Performance facilitated by Patrick within the Discipline of Drama, Theatre and Performance.

If you wish to contact Prof Lonergan, you can email him at patrick.lonergan@universityofgalway.ie