Externally Funded Research Projects

Guildhall School’s research department develops, supports and champions important and unique research projects across subject areas that feed into creative knowledge and practice. Our research projects approach music and drama through a wide spectrum of novel discourses, which offer new insights into the arts and society.

An animated still from Henny Penny

Externally Funded Research Projects

Collaboration is at the heart of the Guildhall School’s research. Our research projects have included partnerships with the Barbican, the V&A Museum, and the National Opera Studio, as we work to ensure that our research projects have a strong beneficial impact on society and the creative industries.

The Guildhall School’s position as a conservatoire makes it an ideal environment for creative, innovative research. Our researchers are experienced academics and practitioners who are dedicated to the development of new understanding and knowledge. We invite researchers to contact us if they wish to work with us on future projects.

The school’s research projects produce academic papers, but they also result in scores, performances, and recordings. Our PURE repository provides free access to many of the School’s research outputs, or you can visit our project pages for more information about our on-going work.

Current projects

Abolition song project image

Abolition Songs and its Legacies

Interrogating newly discovered 18th-century Abolitionist vocal music, and placing it in the histories of the British trade in enslaved peoples, the abolitionist movement, Black writers in Britain, and the musical legacies of Black communities.

Opera singer on stage in an immersive performance

Immersive Opera

Integrating cutting-edge technologies, innovative staging, and interactive audience experiences to reimagine the traditional boundaries of opera.

Past projects

Stuart Wood wearing a light blue jumper

Aeriel: Aesthetic Research in Everyday Life

Addressing the impact of reduced resourcing in care homes on the relationship between the carer and the cared-for through highlighting non-verbal interaction in everyday situations, using music as a tool.

Singer performing on stage in Milton Court

Finding a Voice

Encouraging people who ‘don't sing’ in specially-designed programmes in order to understand the journeys adult non-singers take in learning to sing, and the ways they can be supported through a combination of psychological, educational, and artistic research.

Hand drawing of a person playing a sitar under the sign 'cultural rights'

Music for Social Impact

Assisting people to generate artistically valued musical outputs, while also helping them to achieve defined social goals such as inclusion, empowerment, community building, activism.

singer in period costume

The Operatic Canon

Bringing together academic and industry thinkers for a focused conversation about the emergence, evolution, history, and future of the operatic canon.

Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

The Phantom on Film

Mapping the mechanisms and extent of cultural transfer represented by the 50+ film reinterpretations and rearticulations of Gaston Leroux’s novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra.

Raising a Voice

Raising a Voice

Using choral singing to challenge how we think about climate culture.