Research
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Overview
We create diverse, world-leading, and internationally excellent research that is a catalyst for far-reaching cultural and socio-economic impact.
Our focus is on inspiring innovative directions for our art forms, injecting fresh insights into their processes and practices, and creating new perspectives on their role in our economies, cultures and ecologies.
Research at RCS is highly interdisciplinary (we are the only conservatoire in Europe with expertise spanning all the performing arts), delivering new insights and innovation in dance, drama, music, education, production and film.
| In Research Excellence Framework 2021, RCS research was ranked the highest of any Scottish Higher Education Institution in our Unit of Assessment, and in the top quartile for all UK institutions in our discipline
| 100% of our submitted research impact was judged to be outstanding or very considerable in terms of its reach and significance (3*/4*)
RCS has a thriving research culture; enabling us to attain a top ten position in the prestigious QS World University Rankings for Performing Arts. This is rooted in a nurturing and collaborative environment, entailing regular research clinics, a journal club, and guided ‘time to write’ sessions that are hosted by senior research staff.
Our research excellence is driven by a plethora of broad collaborations with industry and academia, accelerating innovation, uptake and the practical application of our work. This includes long-standing and strategic partnerships with Scottish Ballet, St. Andrews University, Drake Music Scotland, and the Glasgow School of Art.
Other key collaborators include:
- HEIs within Scotland and across the UK
- BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
- Köln International School of Design
- The Work Room (as part of the AHRC funded ‘Future Ecologies: Producing Dance Network)
- National Theatre Scotland
- Chamber Music Scotland
- Paris Conservatoire
- Royal College of Music in London
- Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore
- University of Colorado
- Monash University in Australia
- Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery
- Museum of Motherhood in Florida
| RCS research income has grown by 215% since 2014
| Our state-of-the-art resources and facilities include five performance venues, high-specification electroacoustic and recording studios, rehearsal spaces and practice facilities, plus a thriving Archive and Collection which is the busiest in the UK (Conservatoires UK)
Vision & Strategy
Strategically, we are committed to consolidating and augmenting our research and impact strengths. Our Strategy 2030 is designed to further RCS’s artistic ambitions, resilience and sustainability and, with it, the quality, diversity and esteem of our students, staff and graduates.
“We aim to engage collaboratively and have impact through partnerships across Europe and throughout the world — including regions and institutions new to us that share our creative values” (RCS Strategy 2030)
Research in Focus
Research activity at RCS is artistically orientated and often practice-based, falling under seven research clusters. These are:
- Artistic Research
- Art-making in the Anthropocene
- Creative Health
- Musicology
- New Work and Improvisation
- Performing Arts Education
- Science, Humanities and Arts Research Exchange (SHARE)
The largest research cluster at RCS, artistic research explores questions that arise from practice, uses artistic practice as a method, and frequently (though not always) produces results in the form of artistic works.
Within this cluster is a rich programme of New Work and Improvisation in music, dance and theatre-making; artistic research approaches also inform our work in Creative Health, Art-making in the Anthropocene, and much of our Musicology. RCS researchers helped to draft the Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research.
In this cluster researchers address key questions about humankind’s relationship to the more-than-human world, exploring the role and potential of art-making to open up new understandings of the existential challenges of climate crisis.
Some recent work includes Hopfinger’s performance research exploring the relationships between chronic pain in the body and the ‘trouble’ of ecological pain and Doolittle’s investigations into the relationship between animal songs and human music.
Our researchers explore the impacts of creative approaches and cultural activities on health and wellbeing, innovating and collaborating to orchestrate advances in national and international health and social care systems.
Ongoing work in this cluster includes Whiteside’s work on the impact of participatory dance on neurological conditions, Drury’s work on song-writing in therapeutic settings, and Robertson-Kirkland’s leadership of Scotland’s Singing for Health Network
The study of music takes many forms and RCS academics are highly active within this field, often drawing insights from artistic research approaches.
Researchers in this cluster work on historical musicology – such as Fabrice Fitch’s work on plainsong and medieval polyphony; MacAulay and Dickson use historical, ethnomusicological and artistic research approaches to explore the rich and diverse traditions and practices of Scottish music, while other RCS researchers work on 18th, 19th and 20th century European music.
This significant cluster includes artistic research across music, dance and drama, generating artistic outcomes that arise from research questions. Musical composition is an important aspect of this cluster, with recent work including major music theatre pieces performed across Europe, such as MacRae’s Anthropocene and Fennessy’s Conquest of the Useless; improvisation, whether acoustic, with live electronics, or livecoded is another key aspect; in the sphere of theatre, new work includes both live performance and digital or mixed media work.
The focus of this research cluster is to apply a wide range of methods to understand and improve education, with work on pedagogy and policy.
Projects include Drury’s work on innovative practices around the rights of children and Moscardini’s work in inclusive education; use of videoconferencing and low-latency technologies for instrumental music teaching; and work on the policy context for performing arts education in Scotland, the wider UK and internationally.
Latest Research News
The spectrum of research success at RC is celebrated by the whole community. This includes small awards and prizes to international recognition. Samples of our latest research news are:
Successful Athenaeum Award Applications
We are delighted to highlight the research of three academic staff members, who have recently been awarded funding under the RCS Athenaeum Research Awards. This funding stream (which is currently open for round two, with a deadline for applications on Wednesday 5 February 2025) provides up to £3000 for all-level researchers to broaden and scale their research projects, focusing on originality, significance and rigor.
Dr Bojana Janković
Shared Migrants is a participatory research project exploring the migrant experiences of the ‘Irish border’. The research is conducted in the context of increased interest in the ‘Irish border’, especially in relation to Brexit, and heightened consideration of migrants in this context – on the island of Ireland, as well as in Scotland. The border is redefined through the framework of performance studies, from an open, post-conflict ‘Irish border’ to a hard, tightly controlled ‘migrant border’. The output, in collaboration with Nessa Finnegan, a visual artist and facilitator, will be an innovative physical archive of migrant border performances as a mobile, physical object, contrasting to current digital contributions.
Dr Ailie Robertson
The MacLean-Clephane Manuscripts; Research, Recording and Publication is a project designed to offer novel insights into the enthralling and unpublished Maclean-Clephane manuscripts (1808-1825), which contain a wide selection of Gaelic music and provide examples of genuine early Gaelic harp repertory. By employing a practice-based approach to explore (re)presentations, musical understandings, interpretations and performative practices of the material, artistic and intellectual research will be united. New understanding of historically-informed and contemporary performance for harp will be delivered – culminating in audio recordings and written notation of arrangements of 18 pieces from the manuscripts, released as a CD and tune book. Importantly, the project also illuminates the rare role of women in early collections of traditional music and delves into the living Gaelic culture that surrounded the authors.
Dr Emily Doolittle
Playing music to animals: an interdisciplinary approach to improving our understanding of animals’ responses to music is a collaborative project (with Glasgow University, KU Leuven, and Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg) to research and review existing practises of playing music to animals in farming, research, and domestic contexts, making recommendations for improving both experimental design and ethics. The work has reach across biology, ethics, music and ecology. It has huge potential to improve animal welfare, with relevance to workers in the dairy and egg industry, veterinarians, zookeepers, and pet owners, in addition to academic researchers.
Probing the plight of emerging composers in Scotland
Dr Jill Morgan, Co-programme lead MA Psychology in the Arts (Music), has conducted impactful research into the potential barriers faced by emerging composers in Scotland when seeking to establish and maintain a career in the field of composition.
The research was funded by New Music Scotland and Red Note – both organisations share a commitment to support the development of composers, performers and new music in Scotland and internationally. Qualitative data was gathered and analysed from early career composers and established professionals, with the aim of providing novel insights and constructive recommendations for future consideration.
The findings illuminate key challenges which include financial instability, gender bias, age and disability discrimination. Importantly, it identified the need for optimised educational mentoring and greater funding opportunities to underpin the success, sustainability and diversity of professional composers. The research has been published in the prestigious British Journal of Music Education.
A New Edition and Recording of Jacob Obrecht’s fragmentary Missa Scaramella
RCS is proud to announce that Dr Fabrice Fitch, Senior Research Fellow and Tutor in Composition, specialising in Renaissance polyphony and its performance, has successfully completed the reconstruction of Jacob Obrecht’s fragmentary Missa Scaramella.
This is a cantus firmus mass cycle based on the famous Italian melody familiar to Renaissance music enthusiasts. The Mass survives in a set of manuscript partbooks copied a dozen years or so after the composer’s death in 1505, of which only two of the original four have come down to us. It was first published in its fragmentary state as part of the KVNM’s New Obrecht Edition.
In Dr Fitch’s new edition, the two missing voices have been entirely reconstructed, drawing on elements of musical style, mensural notation, and Obrecht’s extensive output as a composer of Masses. The result offers a recognisable glimpse of a work that might have been reckoned among Obrecht’s finest, had it survived intact — full of the wit and whimsy, formal mastery, and melodic invention of the composer at the height of his creative powers.
The reconstruction has received considerable critical acclaim, having been featured both in Gramophone and on BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show. Reviewing the Binchois Consort’s recording of the work for Hyperion, Gramophone’s reviewer noted that the reconstruction itself is “built on a close understanding of how Obrecht functioned, and the results, full of the most surprising insights, are thoroughly convincing”, and the performers “at the top of their form”. The influential critic Alex Ross chose the recording among the fifteen top recordings for 2024.
Following its professional premiere by the Binchois Consort at the Regensburg Early Music Days (May 2024) and Antwerp Laus Polyphoniae Festival (August 2024), there will be further performances in Brussels (2025) and Birmingham (2026).
