I am excited to announce that the Irish Research Council has granted funding to my project on twentieth-century musical monodrama.  The project will be hosted at Maynooth University, where I will be working as a Research Fellow for the next two years.  The competition was very high, and the awards that the Irish Research Council has made were 80 in total, with a fewer in the Arts and Humanities.

My En-Gendering Monodrama project seeks to challenge cultural perceptions of modernist musical stage works written for solo female singer, critically reflecting on the role of the solo performer with a combination of published research and artistic practice. Mentored by Prof Christopher Morris, I will examine and reconsider the female performer’s decisive and creative role, asking what challenges it might present to contemporary performance practice. How, in the wake of the transformative impact of late-twentieth-century ideas about gender, sexuality and the body, should we engage with this repertoire?

After two years of independent and self-funded work on musical monodrama and various attempts at getting funded, my efforts have finally been rewarded. I can’t tell how happy I am about this result, which proves the significance and interest of my research. I shall thank the Department of Music at Maynooth University for supporting my application, and for allowing me to keep working on my project while on duty as a Lecturer (Sabbatical Cover) there. I should especially thank my mentor for taking on this challenge, and for helping me shape a winning application. As usual, his advise was very valuable, and I learnt a lot form the whole process. A special thanks also to my referees, who supported my application with their recommandations, and all people that contributed to the initial phases of the project with her creative ideas, work and enthusiasm without any guarantee of success.