Research-active Staff
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Dr Martin Perkins
Head of Historical Performance, Senior Lecturer and Instrument Curator
Martin Perkins started his undergraduate studies at Birmingham Conservatoire in 1993 where he studied composition and French Horn. However, his interest in Early Music soon led him to the harpsichord and, after studies with Lucy Carolan, he graduated with an MA in 1998. For his MPhil, at the University of Birmingham, he studied...
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Dr Caroline Potter
Visiting Reader in French Music
Caroline Potter is an award-winning writer and academic who specialises in French music, based in London. Currently Visiting Reader in French Music at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, she has held full-time academic positions in the Music departments of Roehampton and Kingston Universities. She gives guest lectures and...
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Professor Graham Sadler
Research Professor in Music
Professor Sadler is known internationally as an authority on French music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After studying at the Universities of Nottingham and London and the Royal College of Music, he joined the Music Department at the University of Hull, where he remained as lecturer, reader and eventually...
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Professor Jamie Savan
Director of Research, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Jamie Savan is Professor of Performance-led Research in Music and Director of Research at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire , and co-director of BCU's Performance Research Hub . He joined BCU in 2016, having previously worked as a Senior Lecturer and Head of Performance at Newcastle University. Best known as a performer of...
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Dr Luan Shaw
Director of Postgraduate Studies (Music)
Dr Luan Shaw is Director of Postgraduate Studies (Music) at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire where she has taught since 2011. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and was made an Honorary Member of RBC in 2001. In her former role as RBC’s first Head of Pedagogy (2011-2018), she led the significant...
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Howard Skempton
Lecturer in Composition
Howard Skempton was born in Chester in 1947, and has worked as a composer, accordionist, and music publisher. He studied in London with Cornelius Cardew from 1967, who helped him to discover a musical language of great simplicity. Since then he has continued to write undeflected by compositional trends, producing a corpus of...
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Jeffrey Skidmore OBE
Artistic Director of Early Music
Jeffrey Skidmore OBE is one of the country’s foremost choral conductors and is highly regarded by instrumentalists, singers and audiences for the high quality of his performances. He is well-known for exciting programming which is often challenging but always accessible. Jeffrey read music at Magdalen College, Oxford, before...
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Professor Shirley Thompson
Vice Principal (Music)
Shirley Thompson is a graduate of Hull University (BMus, 1987; PhD, 1998). She took up her post at Birmingham Conservatoire in 2001, and was promoted to her present role as Director of Postgraduate Studies in 2009. This role combines the management of the Conservatoire’s taught postgraduate courses with teaching (at both...
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John Thwaites
Head of Keyboard
Professor John Thwaites is best known for his collaborative work with strings and as a founder member of the Primrose Piano Quartet. The Primrose have commissioned and recorded important new work by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Anthony Payne, Sally Beamish, Steve Goss and John Casken, and have recorded the earlier twentieth...
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Dr Adam Whittaker
Head of Pedagogy and Lecturer in Music
Adam is Head of Pedagogy and a Lecturer in Music at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, having previously worked as a Research Fellow in BCU’s CSPACE, and at the University of Nottingham. Adam is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is an internationally recognised scholar in musicology and music education, having given...