About
Dr Amy Williamson is a Teaching Fellow in Music. She teaches across several undergraduate and postgraduate modules and is also Undergraduate Admissions Tutor for the Music Department. Her research interests include medieval English polyphony, music and EDI, and gender and sexuality in popular music.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Medieval English polyphony
- Music and EDI (more specifically, Music and Class in HE and Music and Disability)
- Gender and sexuality in popular music
Current research
I am currently working on a BA-funded project entitled Networks of Preservation and Transformation: The Afterlives of Medieval Music Manuscripts in Post-Reformation England.
This project explores the afterlives of medieval music manuscripts and their preservation and transformation in Renaissance England. It centres on a printed book (1569) with manuscript flyleaves (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Wood 591) tracing ownership to Henry Ferrers, an antiquary linked to the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries. By consulting Ferrers’ personal papers and other sources of medieval music associated with him and his circle, the project investigates how antiquaries acquired and used fragments of medieval music when Latin liturgical material was religiously sensitive, and sometimes dangerous to own. While early antiquaries acted as preservers of the past, this study shows they also played a role in manuscript transformation—dismantling books, recycling leaves, and reshaping sources according to early modern tastes. These fragments are witnesses to both medieval music and post-Reformation England. This project asks if their survival was accidental or they held cultural, historical, or religious meaning for their collectors.
Research projects
Publications
Biography
I completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Southampton in 2008, and a Masters in 2009. In 2016, I completed a PhD under Professor Mark Everist, which was fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the research project Cantum pulcriorem invenire, which focused on the conductus in the thirteenth century. My thesis concentrated on English polyphony during the ‘long’ thirteenth century (c.1150-c.1350), with a particular focus on genre and repertory.
In 2017-18, I worked as a Teaching Fellow, delivering the modules Music and Comedy (HUMA3016), Research Skills 1 (MUSI6031) and Flappers to Rappers: Girl Singers in 20th Century Popular Music (MUSI2088/3090). In 2018-19, I was a Research Fellow, assisting Dr David Bretherton with his AHRC-funded project, Queer Music, Queer Theory, Queer Music Theory.
From 2019-20, I was a Teaching Associate in Musicology at University of Bristol, contributing to four co-taught undergraduate and MMus modules, and teaching the module Feminine Voices: Gender and Identity in Popular Music Culture.
From 2022, I have been working as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Southampton, where I have taught across various undergraduate and postgraduate modules. I acted as departmental EDI officer from 2022-23 and I have been Undergraduate Admissions Tutor for the Music Department since 2023. In 2024, I was promoted to Senior Teaching Fellow. I was also elected as a councillor of the Royal Musical Association on a three-year tenure from January 2025. I recently also joined the Athena Swan SAT for the School of Humanities.