University of Edinburgh

Post-Doc, Celtic and Scottish Studies

Other Affiliations: Stockholm School of Economics, International Business and Finance
University of Edinburgh, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities

College of Humanities and Social Science: School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Thesis Title: 'Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (1857-1930) and Her Time: A Contextual Study'

About

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, currently working on a number of articles and essays while converting my doctoral dissertation, ‘Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (1857-1930) and Her Time: A Contextual Study’, into a monograph for publication. I completed my PhD at Edinburgh in 2009, basing my thesis largely on the Kennedy-Fraser Collection held by Edinburgh University Library, but also drawing on a wide selection of letters and newspaper material from depositories around the world. In 2007, I received the Helen Doig Prize for my research in Scottish Music, and three years later, I was the winner of the 2010 Ratcliff Prize, awarded by the Michaelis-Jena Ratcliff Prize Trust ‘for an important contribution by an individual to the study of folklore or folk life in Great Britain and Ireland’. In 2010, moreover, I was commissioned by the School of Scottish Studies Archives in the University of Edinburgh and the Centre for Research Collections (CRC), Edinburgh University Library, to organise, carry out a risk assessment of the archive material, and produce a detailed inventory of the non-sounding section of the vast Kennedy-Fraser Collection. The resulting Inventory, completed in September 2011, will eventually be made available online on the CRC website.

In 2010-11, I held a Research Fellowship at The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), The University of Edinburgh, to work on my new research project, ‘An interdisciplinary approach to the resurrection of three interlinked music profiles of the late 19th/early 20th century’, where I intend to explore further a selection of themes and ideas originating from my doctoral research. While at IASH, I came to focus mainly on the Franco-British singer Mme Pauline Vaneri-Filippi, who, after an international career in opera, forged strong links to the academic world when appointed the first woman professor at one of Italy’s most prestigious conservatories. Having become increasingly interested in the rôles of women professionals in music and literature, I expanded the scope of my research project to also include Vaneri-Filippi’s mother, Mme Colmache, a prolific Victorian journalist and author with intriguing links to Prince de Talleyrand-Périgord, William Thackeray, Harriet Martineau, and other contemporary literary and political personalities.

Over the years, I have given numerous papers and talks at academic conferences and events throughout the United Kingdom, on Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, Celtic Revival in Scotland, and nineteenth century music and performers. I regularly give talks on similar subjects and I have published various essays and contributed both to exhibitions and to radio and television broadcasts, including work for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG), Saltire Films, and BBC Radio nan Gàidheal. Most recently, I was invited to write an extensive Introduction for the reissue of Marjory Kennedy-Fraser's autobiography, ‘A Life of Song’, published by The Islands Book Trust in October 2011. I am a member of the Scottish Society for Art Historians (SSAH) and the Swedish Society for Musicology (SSM – Svenska samfundet för musikforskning).

My academic career began in Stockholm, Sweden, where I read English, Italian, and French – later also Musicology, Opera Theatre Studies, History and Theory of Art, German, and Celtic Studies – at Stockholm University (BA, MA), and Church Music at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. I continued my studies at the Stockholm School of Economics, specialising in International Business and Finance, where I won an exchange scholarship to the Università Bocconi in Milan. Following graduation (MSc in Business and Economics), I worked for several years in the banking and finance sector, both in Switzerland and in Scandinavia, most recently as Chief Financial Officer, responsible for a multinational insurance provider’s financial operations and investment management in Sweden and Finland. In 1998, I was selected to take part in the Top Executive Management Education Programme of the Zurich Group at the Kellogg School of Management Executive Education, Evanston, Illinois, USA, and in 2000, then recently appointed Area Manager within a world-wide internal administrative project, I returned to Switzerland for a PriceWaterhouseCoopers SAP R/3 Boot Camp training programme. In the late 1990s, I was a member of the Zurich Group’s Euro Project Steering Committee.

Having successfully completed the SAP implementation project, I started working independently, including financial administration for the Zurich Group and lecturing in Insurance Business Administration at Vilnius University, Lithuania. An inspiring post-graduate Opera Theatre programme at Stockholm University led me back to academia, and after moving to Scotland, I began my doctoral Kennedy-Fraser research at the University of Edinburgh.

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