Lois has extensive experience in Higher Education curriculum design, innovation and review and institutional review, as well as issues and leadership in quality assurance and enhancement and academic management.

She was RNCM’s institutional lead in the Higher Education Academy Degree Standards Project (External Examining) and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is also a role model on the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education Aurora courses.

Previously, she has been Visiting Professor at the Katholiecke Universiteit, Leuven.

A musicologist, Dr Fitch pursues research interests in New Music, and the interdisciplinary relationships between music and other performing arts, focusing in particular on issues of notation/text interpretation and the performer’s creative process.

Lois has nearly 20 years teaching experience in Higher Education, covering broad topics including the History of Western Music from c. 1400, Interdisciplinarity in the Arts, Aesthetics and Performance Art, and has supervised research students in these fields.

As Assistant Principal at RCS Lois provides academic leadership for RCS curriculum in learning, teaching, research and knowledge exchange as well as ensuring the robustness of the Conservatoire’s quality assurance and enhancement policies and procedures. Priorities include exploring ways of enhancing the student learning experience, acting as a persuasive advocate for RCS students and staff at various external national and international organisations and building on the unique opportunities for collaborative and interdisciplinary practice and research at RCS.

Having benefitted from local authority grants and bursaries throughout her own schooling and student life, without which she could not have accessed Higher Education, Lois is committed to supporting and enhancing fair access to the Performing Arts at all levels in the Conservatoire.

Lois continues to undertake research and is currently preparing two contributions to the Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopaedia (ed. Edward Campbell, University of Aberdeen) on period recordings of Stravinsky’s works, including those under his own baton.

  • Lois is Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
  • Her monograph Brian Ferneyhough was published in 2013 by Intellect Press in association with Chicago University Press
  • She has peer-reviewed journal articles for the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Music Analysis and Music Performance Research

Education and past experience

PhD, Durham University Music Department, 2004

BA (Hons), Durham, 2000

  • CETL teaching Fellow, Durham University Music Department, 2005-2007
  • Teaching Fellow, Newcastle University International centre for Music Studies, 2000-2006
  • Programme Leader, BMus, Edinburgh Napier University, January 2007-August 2008
  • Deputy Head of Undergraduate Studies, RNCM, 2008-2012
  • Head of Undergraduate Programmes, RNCM, 2012-2017