Dr Ariana Phillips-Hutton

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds as a Lecturer in Global Critical and Cultural Study of Music in 2022 after holding postdoctoral research positions at the Queens University Belfast and at the University of Cambridge, where I also held a temporary lectureship in music and served as Director of Studies in Music at Queens College.

I obtained my PhD in Music from the University of Cambridge in 2017. Previously, I received a dual MM in Music History and Literature and in Piano Performance from Baylor University, where I wrote a master's thesis on classical music and 9/11. I also received a BM (summa cum laude and Honors Scholar with Distinction) in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from Baylor University, where I completed an honours thesis on the music of Chopin and the philosophical concept of the sublime and received the Wallace L. Daniel Prize.

I am the author of Music Transforming Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and the co-editor of Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation (Bloomsbury, 2023) and the Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2020). My work has also appeared in Twentieth-Century Music, Ethnomusicology Forum, Popular Music, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, among other places.

Responsibilities

• Deputy Director of Student Education
• Programme Leader for BMus (Performance)

Research interests

My research centres on the philosophy, performance, and politics of contemporary music, which is to say that I think about the hows and whys of what music (as practices, objects, and ideas) does to and for individuals and societies. In particular, I am interested in music’s relationship to violence and conflict transformation, as well as ecomusicology and musical ethics.

Alongside these, I work on questions of decolonising music and education.

I draw primarily on 20th- and 21st-century music in both popular and art traditions, and incorporate influences from historical musicology and ethnomusicology through to media studies, community arts, cultural studies, and philosophy. My current projects reflect this breadth: one investigates the belliphonic imaginary of the South African War (1899–1902); another examines the relationship between musical commemorations of violence and the global circulation of memory; and another examines the ethical significance of the musical voice within contemporary composition and practice.

I welcome enquiries from potential PhD students working in and around these areas.

Qualifications

• PhD Music
• MMus Music History and Literature
• MMus Piano Performance
• BMus Piano Performance and Pedagogy

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Royal Musical Association
• British Forum for Ethnomusicology
• International Association for the Study of Popular Music
• American Musicological Society

Current postgraduate researchers

• Rui Li