Conference Round-Up Autumn 2025

At the beginning of the autumn term, the fifth Women’s Work in Music Conference took place at Trinity Laban. It was the first time the conference had been in this location, having previously taken place at Bangor University. This year, the conference was subtitled 'Brave New Worlds' in honour of the birth centenary of electronics composer Daphne Oram. Topics relating to new musical worlds were particularly welcome, resulting in a wide range of presentations and panels, from historical performers and composers to the state of the industry today for women.

The Academy was responsible for five of the presentations across this three-day event. Victoria Hodgkinson was in the first session, speaking on her PhD research into ‘Uncovering Contemporary Misogynistic Listening Trends in Handel’s Operas’. Victoria outlined findings from a listening questionnaire she had conducted with conservatoire staff and students, which addressed how customary descriptions of operatic vocal colour and quality can be rooted in societal gender categorisations. An interesting discussion ensued on conceptions of voice from outside the singing world.

Dr Briony Cox-Williams presented a paper on the second day, titled ‘New Worlds of Education: Women and the Nineteenth-Century Royal Academy of Music’. This concentrated on the intersection of music and morality, and how this impacted women’s choices and self-identity as musicians.

On the final day, Erin Ralkowsky Hennessey delivered a lecture recital on Mary Dickenson-Auner, Irish violinist and composer resident in Vienna. Erin played Dickenson-Auner’s Suite for Solo Violin as well as outlining the turbulent and fascinating biography of this forgotten figure.

Also on the last day were Dr Maho Harada and Binyan Xu. Maho spoke on ‘Costume for Violinists in Japan’ and the dual gender biases faced by Asian women musicians, while Binyan’s paper was ‘Discovering the “Unconfined” Hand: The Practical Dilemma of Small-Handed Pianists and Its Potential Solutions.’ It was perhaps surprising how passionate the audience clearly felt about women’s clothing (especially pockets!) in response to Maho’s talk; and Binyan’s use of reviews of female pianists from the 1950s, with their use of overtly sexist and misogynist tropes, engendered an equally impassioned response.

All the Academy presenters felt that the conference inspired new avenues of thought and research. It was particularly good to see the practical application of such a cross-section of research through the music industry panels. Conference director Rhiannon Mathias is to be congratulated on bringing together so much expertise in one place.

The sixth Doctors in Performance Festival Conference (DIP) took place in Helsinki, at the Helsinki Music Centre, on 3–5 September 2025. Established in 2014 at the University of the Arts Helsinki, the Doctors in Performance Festival Conference (DIP) promotes performance and research, especially artistic research. It aims to give practitioners and researchers the opportunity to present their research projects by encouraging performance and lecture-recitals in addition to paper presentations.

Four Academy doctoral students presented their research as part of this year’s DIP conference. Binyan Xu delivered a paper presentation called ‘Discovering The "Unconfined" Hand: The Practical Dilemma of Small-Handed Pianists and Potential Solutions’, while Niklas Lukassen gave a lecture recital on ‘Exploring a Novel Hybrid Instrument: The Bass Cello’.

This was followed by a paper presentation by Ivan Moshchuk, ‘The Edge of Musical Image’, reflecting his practice-led study on the problems of visual translation of musical performance. Liubov Ulybysheva gave a lecture recital on ‘Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Sonata for Cello Solo No.4, Op.140: Editorial Challenges and Possibilities’. In addition to opportunities to present research, the conference also provided a snapshot of the current state of artistic research in music, with occasions for discussion and exchange.

Find out more about the Doctors in Performance Festival Conference

Author: Binyan Xu

Academy role/department: PhD student and pianist

The Doctors in Performance conference struck me with its diversity; the projects often seemed unrelated at first, yet many resonated with one another in unexpected ways. Some were truly innovative ideas I would never have otherwise encountered. Whether or not each project felt directly useful to my own research, the overall experience was eye-opening.

Although my own session did not generate as much discussion as I had hoped (it happens!), it generated informal questions afterwards and this prompted me to reflect on the very nature of asking questions in a conference environment. I have always found it difficult to ask questions freely, often hesitating because of personal concerns and habits. To learn from others, I began noting down the kinds of questions raised in different panels.

One of the presentations explored the new quarter-tone piano, an instrument I knew very little about. But just as in an earlier project on collaborative theatrical performance – where someone asked how audiences and performers can make decisions together on an equal footing – here someone asked what repertoire might be most suitable for the quarter-tone piano. In the end, these questions circled back to the essence of performance: the dialogue between composer, performer, and audience. We may start from very different directions, but we always seem to arrive at the same place.

Another project on artistic collaboration and the way it shapes a performer’s artistic identity and practice especially struck me. At first it might have seemed a familiar theme, like chamber music, but in fact it extended performance into a theatrical dimension. To me, the recording that the presenter played was arguably less about transmitting a message to the audience than about documenting the result of teamwork. What she learned in the process was far more important than the outcome, and that learning was deeply personal.

In a similar way, one of the keynotes by Inja Stanović centred on recordings. Stanović studied and recreated historical recordings, and her live performance was engaging, but again, it felt interesting more for the process than for the result.

To me, this emphasis on the creative process is exactly the strength of artistic research. Over the past two years I have come to realise that no one can guarantee an audience will learn something concrete from research outcomes. The experiences are valuable in themselves— like travel diaries or autobiographies. Their very existence is precious. Many projects at the conference seemed to have little to do with my specific area of research, yet what mattered was that they allowed me to re-examine my work from new perspectives.

Image credit: Binyan Xu

Author name: Liubov Ulybysheva

Author Academy role/department: PhD student and cellist

This was my first time attending the Doctors in Performance Festival Conference in Helsinki. It was a highly inspiring and incredibly stimulating event. There were various talks and lecture-recitals taking place across three days on a wide range of topics, from early fortepiano sonata aesthetics to digitally mediated free improvisation performance. One of the only downsides of the conference was having up to three papers presented at the same time which meant having to choose one topic over another and missing some of the lecture-recitals that would have been very useful to attend otherwise.

One of the highlights of the conference was a keynote presented by Inja Stanović (University of Surrey) on artistic research and historically informed performance. It was a marvellously thought-through and well-presented paper that was also illustrated by the speaker at the piano and afforded the listeners a look into historical recordings and the making of them. The video clips accompanying the paper were very informative and illustrated the complete process of Dr. Stanović’s research in detail.

All the sessions had plenty of time for questions and dialogue, and often we would carry on those discussions in the tea breaks and later in the day. This exchange of ideas with newly met colleagues was refreshing and gave me a few new angles in my own topic of research following my lecture-recital. It was very beneficial to get a different perspective on my research from colleagues who were not familiar with it and therefore had a completely fresh approach.