Postgraduate Research Assistant

Location: St Aldate’s, Oxford, OX1 1DB

About the role

The Faculty of Music proposes to appoint a fixed-term Research Assistant for ‘Elgar’s Themes’ a major large-scale research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Principal Investigator Prof. Daniel Grimley at the University of Oxford. This is for a fixed period of 36 months with effect from 7 October 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Themes are a foundational unit of musical organisation and experience, but critical study of thematic process has become increasingly marginalised. This ground-breaking interdisciplinary project will employ cutting-edge digital methods to revitalise the analysis of musical themes via an online thematic catalogue of the work of Edward Elgar (1857-1934). Elgar’s diaries, writings and correspondence indicate how he associated themes with specific times and places, particular people (most famously in the ‘friends pictured within’ the Variations, op. 36), and with feelings, moods, memories and emotions. Connecting historical modes of understanding with the opportunities enabled by a fully digital environment supports a new understanding of theme as linked data, promoting a fresh engagement with questions of thematic ontology and musical meaning.

About you

We are seeking to appoint an experienced postdoctoral Research Assistant to undertake foundational work with one of the project’s workstreams. Reporting to the project PI Grimley and senior researcher Dr. Kevin Page, based at the Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC), the RA will be a digital musicologist with experience of working with archival materials and catalogues.

The person appointed will collate catalogue materials and assemble entries for the digital catalogue of Elgar’s work, updating current metadata from existing catalogue resources (held at the BL and elsewhere), and generating original metadata for new sources. The catalogue will be assembled using the specialist music cataloguing software MerMEId, originally developed at the Royal Library, Copenhagen (mermeid.edirom.de/about.html) and previously employed by members of the project team to create a digital catalogue of the works of Frederick Delius (delius.music.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/welcome.html).

Applications are welcome from candidates with experience of using specialised software and digital methods within a research investigation.

Candidates must hold a relevant PhD/DPhil in digital humanities or a cognate field.

The duties and skills required are described in further detail in the job description.

Any further enquires may be addressed to PI Prof. Daniel Grimley: daniel.grimley@music.ox.ac.uk or recruitment@music.ox.ac.uk

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