ABOUT

Dr Emma Kavanagh is a postdoctoral researcher specialising in opera and musical culture in France between the Revolution and the First World War, with a particular emphasis on representation, staging and stagecraft, and music criticism. Her doctoral research focused on opera during the Belle Époque (1870–1914), and now appears in journals across the fields of musicology and French Studies. She is now working on a new book project, provisionally titled Women, Opera, and the Parisian Press: From the Age of Napoleon to the First World War.

Emma currently holds a research post at Aix-Marseille Université, working on the collaborative archival project AixOPÉRA as part of the PRISM (Perceptions, Représentations, Image, Son, Musique) research group. Prior to taking up this position, she held a Career Development Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, and a Visiting Fellowship at the Institut de Recherche en Musicologie (IReMus) in Paris, funded by the French Embassy in the UK. Emma holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge, a Master's degree from the University of Nottingham, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford.

Alongside her academic work, Emma enjoys any opportunity to combine her research with forward-facing work in public engagement. She has given talks on her research, produced a commissioned episode for The French History Podcast, and written for Oxford Musician, the Lincoln Imprint. She also writes regularly for the BBC, contributing programme notes to the BBC Proms as well as other concerts from the BBC’s flagship orchestras.

Emma also maintains a freelance music career as a choral singer, performing in concerts, services, and recordings for various student and professional ensembles.