Music MA: Global Popular Musics pathway

Core modules

You will study three core modules:

This practice-led module will build the skills needed to conduct an independent ethnographic research project. Throughout the module, you will become acquainted with the various methods available for fieldwork and learn to assess their strengths and weaknesses in relation to varying research contexts.

Topics addressed may include: project design and planning, ethics, audio-visual documentation, interviewing, fieldnotes, transcription, and online/virtual ethnography. Instruction and assessment will be hands-on, applying theoretical readings to concrete materials and activities.
Assessment: 2,500-word research prospectus and five applied fieldwork assignments totalling 2,500 words

This module aims to familiarise you with a field of study that has been emerging from the intersection of ethnomusicology and popular music studies. Assigned readings, discussions, and assessments will seek to situate popular music in a global context while also attending to the ways that global processes impact local musical actors, scenes, and styles. Particular attention will be paid to ethnography and its application to the study of popular musics. Topics and cases to be explored included diasporic popular musics, musical migration, recording and production, global music industries, musical labour in the ‘creative industries’, local music scenes, urban contexts, and media theory. This module will also provide an orientation to relevant fields of study (including ethnomusicology and popular music studies) through an engagement with foundational disciplinary texts as well as current debates.
Assessment: 3,000-word research project and ten weekly reading responses totalling 1,500 words

This module prepares you for the field of Musicology by examining key issues, theories, and methodologies in the field. It is taught as a series of seminars by a number of staff in the Department of Music, and any research presentations organised for department staff and visiting scholars.
Assessment: Two 2,500-word essays

You will also choose three optional modules from a range which typically includes:

• Advanced Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music
• Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art
• British Music Studies 1850-1975
• Contemporary Music Studies
• Experimental Music and Sound Art

You may also select one undergraduate module to take at the MA level. Modules may include:

• Music Festivals
• Music, Protest and Social Activism
• Postsocialist Music and Ethnography
• The Blues

For more information, see our Music module descriptions.

You also have the opportunity to take one optional module outside of Music. Modules may include:

• Empire and Identity
• Ideas, Ideals and Ideologies
• Sexuality, Gender and Representation

In addition to your taught modules, you will conduct a piece of independent research with the support of a supervisor, culminating in a 15,000-word dissertation.

Please note that the optional module information listed on the website for this programme is intended to be indicative, and the availability of optional modules may vary from year to year. Where a module is no longer available we will let you know as soon as we can and help you to make other choices.