Job Listing: Post Doctoral Researcher, Music Department at Maynooth University (Applications due 01/14/24)
The Music Department at Maynooth University invites applications for a 24-month position as a Postdoctoral Researcher to work with Professor Karen Desmond’s research team on the project “Polyphonic Singing and Communities of Music Writing in Medieval Britain and Ireland, c. 1150 to c. 1350” (BROKENSONG). They seek a candidate with a background in Computational Musicology, Digital Humanities, or related fields. The candidate should have programming experience working with systems and standards related to the encoding, presentation, and analysis of humanities data, preferably experienced with image and/or music data. Applications are due by January 14, 2024.
Applications are due by January 14, 2024.
Salary range: €42,783 – €45,322
The BROKENSONG project examines polyphonic singing in medieval Britain and Ireland during a transformative period of western music history, c. 1150-1350, when written books devoted to polyphony began to proliferate. Using methodologies from musicology, music analysis, medieval and manuscript studies, practice-based research, and digital humanities, BROKENSONG aims to answer the principal research question: What does it mean for a culture to write its music down? BROKENSONG investigates what this act of ‘writing-down’ meant to and for musical communities. The insular sources extant from this period—just over a hundred mostly fragmentary sources—hint at stories of music practice and creation different from those suggested by the highly curated continental anthologies of polyphony that survive from continental Europe, and around which the history of western music was constructed. These are mostly broken books transmitting broken songs: yet BROKENSONG proposes that its in-depth study of these fragmentary and damaged sources will provide a breakthrough on fundamental questions regarding the relationship between music’s material culture—its books and its technologies of music writing—and processes of music creation in the later Middle Ages. It will reconstruct a lost vibrant musical culture, contextualizing these remnants of music writing and practice within specific music communities.
Learn more and apply at https://bit.ly/3NbFA5u.