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Music (Structured PhD)

Music (Structured PhD Arts HSS)

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Course Overview
Research Areas
Course Fees
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Course Overview

As part of the doctoral training available on the Structured PhD programme, students avail themselves of a range of interdisciplinary taught modules. The wide menu of available options include modules that:

are discipline-specific in that they augment the student’s existing knowledge in their specialist area
are dissertation-specific in that they supply core skills which are essential to completion of the research project, e.g., additional language skills
acknowledge a student’s professional development, e.g., presentation of a paper at an international conference
enhance a student’s employability through generic training, e.g., careers workshops, computer literacy.

Each student will be assigned a primary Supervisor(s) and a Graduate Research Committee made up of experienced researchers to plan their programme of study and to provide on-going support to their research.

The Discipline of Music encourages PhD degree applications across all genres of music.

A PhD dissertation in Music should make a substantial and original contribution to its field of knowledge. The PhD degree is awarded for work that is 'worthy of publication, in whole or in part, as a work of serious scholarship' ( University of Galway Calendar).

Programmes Available

Structured PhD 4 years full-time, 6 years part-time

Associated

Learning Outcomes

Entry Requirements

For all Arts Research Programmes the following supporting documentation must be submitted:

Qualifications and exam results (transcripts) to date:required for all non-University of Galway applicants and for University of Galway graduates who did not receive their undergraduate degrees from University of Galway. Applicants who have still to graduate must upload these on receipt
English language competency: if necessary, evidence of English language competency
Passport or birth certificate: non University of Galway-applicants only—a copy of your passport or birth certificate must also be uploaded.

Who’s Suited to This Course

Current research projects

Current research projects (Optional)

Current PhD Projects:

Putting on the trousers for the trouser role… in opera leadership in Ireland (funded by Research Ireland)
Reinterpretations of Unaccompanied Traditional Irish Singing in the Early 21^st Century (project jointly hosted by the University of Galway and University Paris 8)
Sean-nós singing and linguistic development (focusing on dialect forms) (co-supervised with Roinn na Gaeilge, University of Galway)
Women's intersubjectivity in sean-nós singing

Visiting PhD Researcher

Gender and sean-nós dance

Current funded research opportunity

Work Placement

Related Student Organisations

Career Opportunities

Employers increasingly value creativity above all other qualities in the workforce. A PhD study in Music develops literary, digital, linguistic, analytical, performative and creative skills. Many PhD graduates find success in performance, teaching, composition, academia, sound engineering, music therapy, arts administration, journalism, broadcasting, publishing, librarianship and archivism.

Find a Supervisor / PhD Project

If you are still looking for a potential supervisor or PhD project or would like to identify the key research interests of our academic staff and researchers, you can use our online portal to help in that search

Research Areas

Research Areas

Dr Thomson: Late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century British and Irish art music; reception history; music historiography; music and literature; analysis; editing.

Dr Feery: Acoustic Composition; Electro-Acoustic Composition; Opera; Music for Stage and Screen; Experimental Music and Improvisation; Popular Music and Songwriting.

Dr Hanlon: Cultural musicology; historiography in Western art music: popular music studies; the intersection of music with social movements, including feminist movements and the LGBTQ+ rights movements since the early 1970s; music as medicine.

Dr Ní Shiochain: 17th-19th-century Irish-speaking women song composers, lamenters, and singers; sean-nós singing; anonymous women's voices in song; oral composition, transmission, and performance; Irish traditional music and dance; the inter-relationship between melody and embodiment in dance, particularly in polkas and slides; the relationship of poetic metre to melodic structure in sean-nós song; song and thought formation; song and liminality; song and selfhood/identity; anti-colonial song; decolonising arts practice and artistic research; oral theory; performance theory; ethnomusicology; cultural musicology. Performance specialisms: sean-nós singing, set-dancing, whistle playing.