Staff Research

David Fennessy (b.1976, Ireland) is a composer based in Glasgow who teaches composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. His music is performed regularly by ensembles and orchestras both home and abroad and has been recorded on the NMC, Naxos and Ensemble Modern labels. 

He is published in Vienna by Universal Edition.

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Dr Laura Bissell is a writer, academic, and performance-researcher. She is Interim Head of Contemporary Performance Practice/Lecturer in Research at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Laura has a PhD in Feminism, Technology and Performance and has presented her research nationally and internationally. Laura’s poetry, creative writing and articles have been published in journals and anthologies and she has three books coming out in 2021.

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Stephen Broad is an islander in exile, researcher, teacher, community conductor and occasional broadcaster. He studied at the Music School of Douglas Academy (Piano with Anne Crawford and composition with William Sweeney) and then at the University of Glasgow, where he won prizes in music and physics. He undertook a DPhil in Historical Musicology at Worcester College, Oxford with the late Robert Sherlaw Johnson and with Annegret Fauser, and is Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

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Colin Broom is a composer based in Scotland, UK. He studied composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama.

Colin is Jazz Coordinator at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and teaches both in the Composition and Creative & Contextual Studies departments.

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Oliver is a Lecturer in the Composition Department at the RCS. He has written a wide variety of works for many professional, amateur, youth and theatre organisations, which have been broadcast and performed around the world, and is interested in developing new environments for new music, collaborating with other artists and organisations to find ways to communicate to new audiences.

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Born and raised in Alaska, Josh arrived in Scotland in 1992 to study Scottish Gaelic at the University of Aberdeen (MA, 1996). He then undertook doctoral research in the history of the piping tradition of the southern Outer Hebrides at the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh (PhD, 2001).

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Emily Doolittle is a composer and researcher with an ongoing interest in the relationship between human music and animal songs, which she explores through music, writing, and in interdisciplinary collaborations with scientists. Other research interests include environmental activism through the arts, interdisciplinarity, music and gender, musical storytelling, and folklore. Originally from Canada, Doolittle has been an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at RCS since 2017. 

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Rachel is a freelance musician and researcher working predominantly in the field of music education and psychology. She is the creator and composer of BabyO and SensoryO, two groundbreaking operas for infants aged between 6 and 36 months, for which she has received international acclaim.

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Laura González’s work falls between medical humanities, psychoanalysis, performance and Eastern thought. She has written on the seductive qualities of a lemon squeezer, is the author of ‘Make Me Yours: How Art Seduces’ and has published chapters on inter-semiotic translation, her maternal line and madness. She is writing a book on hysteria, translating Freud’s case histories into performance and exploring the dramaturgical potential of breath.

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Roy Howat studied at the RSAMD and Cambridge University, where his doctorate formed the basis of his 1983 book Debussy in proportion. He combines international concert performance with research, notably in musical structure, performing and editorial issues. Other publications include critical editions of major works by Debussy, Fauré, Chopin and Chabrier, the book The Art of French Piano Music, and chapters in numerous other books.

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Linda Buckley is an Irish composer whose work is often concerned with exploring connections between electronic and acoustic sound sources, with mixed media collaboration being a major aspect of her practice. She holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin and was a Fulbright Scholar at New York University.

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Angela Jaap completed her PhD at the University of Glasgow with research into the recognition and development of musical talent. Her role at RCS is largely within the initial teacher education programmes where she has responsibility for leading teacher education and professional learning. Angela has published in peer reviewed education and music education journals and presented at national and international conferences. Her research interests lie primarily within arts education and professional learning and enquiry for teachers.