Our music research
An exciting, vibrant and friendly research environment which expands knowledge and challenges perceptions.
We support a wide range of music research and offer many opportunities for doctoral and postdoctoral study across the discipline.
Our music research covers a wide variety of topics in performance, composition, musicology and technology and our vibrant, busy research clusters provide focus for individual research strands and encourage collaboration across the University.
The School is home to a thriving and friendly community of postgraduate music researchers and we welcome enquiries from prospective researchers and collaborators.
Related links
- Music at York
Discover our courses, concerts, history and more
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The Research Excellence Framework 2021
- 100% of our music research environment - the support we give our researchers - and 100% of our music research impact were rated ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. Also, 74% of our research outputs were judged ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’.
Music research strengths
Our music research addresses creativity from three perspectives: creativity in contemporary music, in context across time and place and in music technologies. These perspectives are embedded within our three Research Clusters: the Contemporary Music Research Cluster, the Musical Cultures and Communities Research Cluster and the Music, Science and Technology Research Cluster.

Impact and engagement
From music technology to preserving musical history, our research is having an impact throughout the world. We regularly engage with the public through our seminar series and performance-based research.
Highlights

Music facilities
We have a range of facilities to support all aspects of music research. These include concert venues, recording studios, and practice rooms and publishing - all available for use by our students.
University research themes
Interdisciplinary research is one of our strengths. We collaborate across the University's research themes – areas of research excellence that cross departmental boundaries. We have particularly strong partnerships within three themes:
Research seminar series
To showcase our research, and enhance collaboration, we hold a regular series of seminars including papers by visiting speakers, as well as presentations by University of York staff and current research students.

Related links
- Music at York
Discover our courses, concerts, history and more