Lecturer in Composition

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Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is seeking to appoint an outstanding Lecturer in Composition to join our dynamic and internationally respected department. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to one of the UK’s most forward-thinking centres for contemporary music creation.

You will play a key role in delivering and shaping our undergraduate and postgraduate composition programmes. This includes teaching individual composition lessons, leading academic classes, overseeing professional composition projects, and contributing to the strategic development of the curriculum and the department’s creative profile.

Working alongside a distinguished team of Visiting Tutors—all active composers at the forefront of today’s music scene—you’ll bring the leadership and collaborative skills needed to guide innovative module delivery and foster an inspiring learning environment. You will be instrumental in managing the interplay between a vibrant student cohort and a professional team of artist-educators.

Your responsibilities will also encompass the coordination of day-to-day teaching and project activity, active involvement in shaping departmental ethos and direction, and close collaboration with academic and administrative colleagues to ensure an outstanding student experience.

We are looking for candidates with current experience of teaching composition in higher education and a postgraduate qualification (or equivalent professional experience). We are particularly keen to hear from applicants with expertise in emerging and cross-disciplinary fields such as composition for screen (film, TV, gaming), songwriting, or hardware-based synthesis. Experience in practice-based research would be a significant advantage.

For an informal discussion about the post please contact the Head of Composition, Professor Joe Cutler (Joe.Cutler@bcu.ac.uk).

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Birmingham City University is deeply committed to equality, diversity, and inclusivity at all levels in the organisation, and to addressing underrepresentation in our workforce to ensure we are truly representative of the community we serve. We welcome applications from applicants from all backgrounds and communities for this role, and particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic applicants.

The University is proudly Disability Confident. This means amongst other things that we commit to offering a guaranteed interview to disabled applicants who fully meet the essential criteria for each role.

Please click the below link to download the Job Description:

Lecturer

Please download additional Guidance for Applicants:

Guidance for Applicants

About Us

At the heart of our Strategy for 2030 and Beyond, it is our mission to enable our students to transform their lives and to achieve their potential. Through our education and research, and the roles our graduates go on to play in the world, we not only support individuals to transform their lives, but we also play a part in transforming society.

Located in the centre of the UK’s second city, we are a university with a long heritage of innovation and of making, dating back to our origins in 1843 when we were founded as the Birmingham Government School of Design.

Our heritage of making through innovation and its application through knowledge exchange, and of creative research and practice, today finds it expression in our STEAM agenda, in our research and enterprise, and in our commitment to challenge-based learning. Working across disciplines, and delivering impactful research and enterprise, interdisciplinarity is at the heart of the continuing transformation of our academic portfolio.