Doctoral study in Music

Options for doctoral study at the School of Music include:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The traditional PhD thesis is a formal piece of advanced research, with a final examined thesis of up to 100,000 words. Your thesis serves as a contribution to the field of music research on both a local and international level. To find out more about the programme structure, entry requirements and start dates, visit Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).

PhD including Scholarly Creative Work

You can also consider completing your PhD including Scholarly Creative Work. This allows you to submit a portfolio of compositions, a performance or teaching portfolio as examinable work. There are some specific guidelines around the admission requirements and timing of the examination for creative works. To find out more about this option, visit PhD including Scholarly Creative Work.

We understand that decisions about where to undertake doctoral study are often based on supervisor quality and a strong candidate-supervisor relationship. School of Music staff are internationally renowned composers, musicologists, performers, scholars and educators who have made significant contributions to national and international music endeavours.

Associate Professor Allan Badley

Allan’s research interest lies in music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries with a particular emphasis on the lives, works and professional environment of major contemporaries of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. He has published editions of important works by Wanhal, Pleyel, Hummel and Ries and is currently writing a book on the Viennese composer Leopold Hofmann.

Find out more: Associate Professor Allan Badley
Contact Allan: a.badley@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Gregory Camp

Dr Gregory Camp’s areas of research include film music and opera, notably Monteverdi, Disney, and 1950s cinema. He welcomes masters and doctoral students with interests in these areas and in historical and critical musicology more broadly.

Areas of research

• Mid 20th-century American film music
• Opera staging
• Monteverdi
• Disney
• Musical theatre
• Pedagogy of music history and theory
• Linguistics and singing
• Historical and critical musicology

Find out more: Dr Gregory Camp
Contact Gregory: g.camp@auckland.ac.nz

Dr David Chisholm

Dr David Chisholm is internationally recognised as a composer defined by diverse and hybrid collaboration and a curator and producer of vision and courage. He is the composer of roughly 50 original compositions including ten long-form works, ranging orchestral, chamber, choral electronics, film, theatre, dance and installation and web projects.

Areas of research

• Structure and duration in composition
• Musical hermeneutics
• Queer creativity
• Transhistorical aesthetics
• Reframing of vestigial European musical forms
• Composer identity and the invisibility of creative labour

Find out more: Dr David Chisholm
Contact David: david.chisholm@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Kevin Field

Find out more: Dr Kevin Field
Contact Kevin: k.field@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Chris Gendall

Chris Gendall’s works have graced the programmes of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, NZTrio, Mark Menzies and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Saar Berger, and the New Zealand String Quartet. He studied composition at Victoria University of Wellington before completing a doctoral degree at Cornell University with Roberto Sierra and Steven Stucky.

Find out more: Dr Chris Gendall
Contact Chris: chris.gendall@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Olivier Holland

Dr Olivier Holland works as a senior lecturer in the jazz department. His research specialities include double bass technique and, in the field of jazz composition, linear writing and the fusion of different music genres.

Since starting his performance career in 1989, Olivier has performed in Europe and Australasia with artists such as Joscho Stephan, John Goldsby, Doug Lawrence, Jamey Oehlers, James Muller, Nathan Haines, Whirimako Black, Stefon Harris and Florian Ross. He has to date contributed to 22 CD releases, 3 of which are his own projects.

Find out more: Dr Olivier Holland
Contact Olivier: o.holland@auckland.ac.nz

Associate Professor Leonie Holmes

Associate Professor Leonie Holmes is a prominent New Zealand composer, receiving frequent commissions in the fields of orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal and solo instrumental music. She has also written many works for school and community groups and is active as a speaker, adjudicator and teacher at all levels and age groups within the New Zealand music community.

Areas of research

• Vocal and instrumental composition
• New Zealand music
• Community music making
• Creative music and music

Find out more: Associate Professor Leonie Holmes
Contact Leonie: l.holmes@auckland.ac.nz

Professor David Lines

David is involved in teaching and researching music education. He is currently involved in two main research projects, one on youth and YouTube music learning, the other on community arts and early childhood learning.

David also teaches a leadership course for music/arts educators and a postgraduate course on practical research methodologies.

Areas of research

• School-based music education
• Philosophical perspectives of music education
• Community based music teaching and learning
• Alternative pedagogies and multimedia practices
• Music learning

Find out more: Professor David Lines
Contact David: d.lines@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Millie Locke

Dr Millie Locke is a lecturer in Music Education in the School of Music. Millie has had a wide range of experience, both as a music education practitioner and a researcher, in a wide range of contexts which include school, the studio, and, pre-service and in-service teacher education.

Areas of research

• Music education pedagogy
• Adaptations of Orff approach
• Orff approach and creativity
• Critical pedagogy in music education
• Music education practice in bicultural and culturally diverse settings
• Arts-based pedagogies

Find out more: Dr Millie Locke
Contact Millie: millie.locke@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Roger Manins

Dr Roger Manins is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland specialising in jazz saxophone, composition and improvisation. His primary research into alternative non-traditional approaches to jazz improvisation resulted in Circle-Cloud Theory: “A Modern Theory Applied to Saxophone Playing.” Roger is grounded in the jazz tradition, is a fluent improviser from swing to free jazz and is experienced with the improvisational approaches of George Garzone and Steve Coleman.

Areas of research

• Improvisation for Jazz Saxophone: All styles from swing to modern
• Composition
• Circle-Cloud Theory: A New Approach to Jazz Composition and Improvisation
• Jazz organ ensemble
• Saxophone pedagogy

Find out more: Dr Roger Manins
Contact Roger: r.manins@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Fabio Morreale

Dr Fabio Morreale is a lecturer in Music Technology and Composition. He welcomes masters and doctoral students with interests in the areas of research specified below, and in music and art technology more broadly.

Areas of research

• Human-AI collaborations in music, design, and fine arts
• Music and artificial intelligence
• Human-computer interaction
• Digital musical instrument design
• Augmented instruments
• Interactive art
• Technologies for music education
• Open-source in music performance and education
• New paradigms for computer-based performance and composition
• Music streaming critique
• Ethics of technology (mostly data surveillance, AI)

Find out more: Dr Fabio Morreale
Contact Fabio: f.morreale@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Nancy November

Dr Nancy November is a Professor in musicology. Combining interdisciplinarity and cultural history, her research centres on chamber music of the late 18th and 19th centuries, probing questions of historiography, canonisation, and genre.

Areas of research

• Chamber music in the late 18th and 19th centuries
• Musical arrangement and its roles in sociability and canon formation
• Ideas and ideologies of musical performance
• The production of musical editions, including theories of editing
• Pedagogy in higher education, including teaching historical subjects across the disciplines

Find out more: Professor Nancy November
Contact Nancy: n.november@auckland.ac.nz

Associate Professor Te Oti Rakena

Dr Te Oti Rakena (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Ruanui, Kāi Tahu) is an American-trained singer, voice teacher and researcher. He has published widely in the fields of community music, studio pedagogy and indigenous research methodologies. His graduated voice students have participated in the National Opera Studio (UK) the Lindemann Young Artist Programme (Metropolitan Opera) and held Adler Fellowships (San Francisco Opera). Dr Rakena welcomes researchers, educators and performers at Masters and PhD level.

Areas of research

• Community music
• Singing and population health
• Vocal pedagogy
• Tertiary music education
• Indigenous research methodologies
• Māori and Pacific Island student success
• Historical trauma-informed studio pedagogy
• Arts education and assessment
• Creative placemaking

Find out more: Associate Professor Te Oti Rakena
Contact Te Oti: t.rakena@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Marie Ross

Marie Ross is Senior Lecturer of Music at the University of Auckland where she is a leader in reimagining music education for the 21st century. Her career has been a fusion of performance and academic research. She spent over a decade devoting her musical life to a specialization in historical clarinets, performing regularly throughout Europe with world renowned orchestras and chamber ensembles. Moving to New Zealand to focus on teaching and research, she has taught everything from music theory and musicology to a course she designed on Mozart interpretation and performance.

Find out more: Dr Marie Ross
Contact Marie: marie.ross@auckland.ac.nz

Professor W. Dean Sutcliffe

W. Dean Sutcliffe is Professor in the School of Music at the University of Auckland, and co-editor of Eighteenth-Century Music, published by Cambridge University Press, since its inception in 2004.

Areas of research

• Behavioural analysis of music
• Instrumental music of the 18th century
• Expressive typologies in music

Find out more: Professor Dean Sutcliffe
Contact Dean: wd.sutcliffe@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Sarah Watkins

Dr Sarah Watkins has enjoyed an impressive and busy career as a collaborative pianist. She performed across Australia, Asia, the USA and Europe as a founding member of NZTrio from 2002-2018, and now enjoys a wide variety of collaborations with musicians throughout Aotearoa New Zealand.

Find out more: Dr Sarah Watkins
Contact Sarah: sarah.watkins@auckland.ac.nz

'Harmony and Structure in Postminimalism : An Analytical and Compositional Approach' | Supervised by Dr Leonie Holmes, Dr Gregory Camp and Dr Eve de Castro-Robinson

'Exploring an Identity Pedagogy for Digital Audio Workstations' | Supervised by Professor David Lines and Dr Fabio Morreale

'Much Music, Excellent Voice: High-Pitched Baroque Alto Recorders and Their Repertoire' | Supervised by Associate Professor Allan Bradley, Professor Nancy November and Dr Rachael Griffiths-Hughes

'"Viva La Vie Bohème" : An analytical history of rock musical theatre' | Supervised by Dr Gregory Camp and Professor Nancy November

There are several scholarships you may be eligible for when you decide to pursue doctoral studies in Music:

• University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarships