Anika Babel

I am a Research Fellow at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Northumbria University where I currently work on the twentieth-century strand of the UKRI-funded project ‘Global Music Technologies: Collaboration and Cultural Exchange,’ principally led by Dr Rachael Durkin.

Previously, I was an occasional lecturer at the University College Dublin School of Music and the Creative Futures Academy. It was here that I completed my doctoral thesis, “Reel Pianos: Representing Women at the Keyboard in Contemporary Narrative Film,” supervised by Dr Laura Anderson. 

As an avid public scholar, my research — which centers on the piano and popular culture — has featured in print, online, and across the airwaves, further to my outreach initiatives with community groups.

My work is available or forthcoming in journals such as The Soundtrack, Création Collective au Cinéma, Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung, Music Explorer Series, and The Musicology Review.

I am the founding president of the Dublin Musicology Collective, which bolstered community among Irish-based or diasporic postgraduates and ECRs during the pandemic. I was co-editor of the tenth issue of The Musicology Review, and my editorial/research assistance has seen dozens of monographs and articles come to fruition with publishers such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Boydell & Brewer, Brepols, Routledge, and Palgrave Macmillon.

My research and creative practice has been supported by bodies such as the Arts Council of Ireland, the Music & Letters Trust, Women in Global Music, the International Musicology Society, UCD Seed Funding, and the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

I am an active member of Northumbria University’s Music Research Group, the Society for Musicology in Ireland, and the Music and the Moving Image community.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, curiosities, or collaborations in mind. 

My work centres on the piano. I approach the instrument as a cultural idea as much as a physical instrument, which has led me to a diversity of exciting contexts — from the music of Nina Simone, Kate Bush, and Claude Debussy, to representations of pianism in contemporary narrative cinema. Now my focus lies on electromechanical developments of the twenthieth century — how to make pianos lighter, louders, and more easily transportable — in parellel to technological developments in electric-guitar making.

New materialism, such as flat ontology, underpins much of my thinking; it caters for multifaceted considerations of music, culture, and society. This kind of approach thrives on creative thinking — something enhanced through my involvement with the Creative Futures Academy. Here, I worked alongside a team of academic and industry experts to foster learning spaces in which students convey their research as short films, plays, podcasts, musical compositions, and so on. 

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