Master of Music (MMus)

Michelle was formerly a Fulbright Scholar at Durham University and taught previously at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Xavier University, and University of Tennessee – Southern. Michelle holds a PhD in musicology, with a cognate in British literature and literary theory, from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and also holds a MMus in music history and a BMus in piano performance. Michelle has also worked as a professional pianist and piano teacher.

Her research uses trauma theory and gender studies within archival and ethnographic approaches to study intersections of music with memory and cultures of care in Britain from the 19th century to today, in order to bring awareness to the significance of music in people’s lives, particularly in relation to mental health and the narrativizing of experience, community, and self. Her publications include the edited volume A Great Divide? Music, Britain and the First World War (Routledge, 2025) and articles in The Journal of Musicological Research, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Women and Music, and The Journal of the Royal Musical Association, as well as chapters in various edited collections. She co-edited a special issue on music, sound and trauma entitled “Music, War and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century” for Nineteenth-Century Music Review (2022) and a special issue on music, sound, and maternity for Women and Music (2022). She is currently co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Music, Sound, and Trauma Studies (2 volumes, 2027). Her research has been funded by the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, and the Music and Letters Trust.

She has been involved in organising several international conferences, including ‘Music, Sound and Trauma: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ (virtual, Indiana University, 2021); North American British Music Studies Association (Utah State University, 2018); ‘A “Great Divide” or a Longer Nineteenth Century? Music, Britain, and the First World War’ and ‘Conflict, Healing, and the Arts in the Long Nineteenth Century’ (both at Durham University in 2017). She has presented her work at and organised panels for conferences throughout Europe and North America, including annual meetings of the Royal Musical Association and the American Musicological Society.

Michelle is also an editor with the journals Nineteenth Century Studies and the International Journal of Health and Wellbeing. She is on the Council of the Royal Musical Association and serves on Fulbright reading and interview panels. She is a founding member of the Music, Sound, and Trauma Study Group of the American Musicological Society and the Music, Sound, and Maternity Research Network. She holds a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

Publications

Refereed Journal Articles:

“Contractions and Cries during COVID: The Traumatic Soundscapes of Lockdown UK Hospital Maternity Wards.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 26 (2022): 145-166.

“Introduction” to special issue “Music, Sound, and Maternity.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 26 (2022): 68-73.

“Soundscapes of Shell Shock in The Hydra, Journal of the Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh, 1916-18.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review special issue, “Music and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century,” ed. Michelle Meinhart and Jillian Rogers, 2022.

“Introduction: Theorising Music and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century”. Nineteenth-Century Music Review special issue, “Music and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century,” ed. Michelle Meinhart and Jillian Rogers, 2022.

“Memory, Music, and Private Mourning in an English Country House during the First World War: Lady Alda Hoare’s Musical Shrine to a Lost Son.” Journal of Musicological Research Vol. 31/ 1-3, “Music and World War I.” (March 2014): 39-95.

Book Chapters:

‘Mediating Trauma: Music Theatricals, Intermediality, and Hospital Gazettes in First World War British Military Hospitals’. In Mediality in Music Theatre, ed. Sarah Fuchs and Ingeborg Zechner. Rombach, 2025.

“Introduction: Negotiating the ‘Great Divide’ of the First World War through Music.” In A Great Divide? Music, Britain and the First World War, ed. Michelle Meinhart, Routledge, 2025.

“Music, Work, and the Wartime ‘Angel in the House.’” In A Great Divide? Music, Britain and the First World War, ed. Michelle Meinhart, Routledge, 2025.

‘Designing Trauma-Informed Assessments in the Decolonized Music Classroom: UK and US Contexts’. In Trauma-Informed Pedagogy and the Post-Secondary Music Class, ed. Kimber Andrews and Angela Kristy Swift. Routledge, 2025.

“Rebirthing Britain: Sounding Middlebrow Trauma in the BBC’s Call the Midwife.” The Palgrave Handbook to Music and Sound in Peak TV, ed. Janet K. Halfyard and Nicholas Reyland. London: Palgrave, 2024.

“A ‘Cosy Corner Chat’ about Opera: Fashioning New Femininities in The Gentlewoman and The Lady Magazines, 1885-1914.” In Opera and Print Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. Alison Mero and Christina Fuhrmann. Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2023.

“Tommy Music Critics, an Unlikely Community, and The Longleat Lyre During World War I.” In Over Here, Over There: Transatlantic Conversations on the Music of World War I, ed. Christina Bashford, William Brooks, and Gayle Sherwood Magee. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019.

“Variations on the Grand Tour: Musical Seduction and Catholic Communion in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Italian Travel Diaries of Lady Anne Noel Blunt.” In Perplext in Faith: Essays on Victorian Beliefs and Doubts, ed. Alisa Clapp-Itnyre and Julie Melnyk, 168-207. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2015.

Edited Journal Issues:

Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, special issue, ‘Soundscapes of Maternity’, ed. edited with Erin Johnson-Williams and Michelle Meinhart, vol. 26 (2022).

Nineteenth-Century Music Review special issue, “Music and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century,” ed. Michelle Meinhart and Jillian Rogers, 2022.

Edited Collections:

A Great Divide or a Long Nineteenth Century: Music, Britain and the First World War, Routledge, 2025.

Review Articles:

“Oh, What a Musical War! A Retrospective after the First World War Centenary.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 146/1 (Spring 2021): 1-17.

The main areas of research that Uchenna is involved in focus on marginalised identities in Western classical music and digital pedagogy. Drawing on years of experience in digital learning, she founded plainsightSOUND – an online research project highlighting the under-recognised work of historical Black African diasporic classical musicians in Britain.

Uchenna is also founder and artistic director of Decus Ensemble – a chamber group specialising in under-performed music composed for wind and strings. Much of their repertoire emerges from her research into Black classical music and repertoire and is regularly presented through concerts and workshops. Uchenna has appeared as a presenter and guest contributor for several BBC Radio programmes, including Sounds Connected and Inside Music. She also presented the BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature documentary ‘Frank Johnson, Queen Victoria and the Black Brass Band’, which followed her research into the life of the innovative 19^th-century African American performer and composer.

Her research interests include:

• Practice-as-Research
• Chamber music
• Black British and European histories
• Classical music curatorial practices
• Decolonial pedagogies
• Digital music scholarship
• Digital learning pedagogies
• Interdisciplinary studies

Dr. Žak Ozmo is a music director, conductor, plucked instrument performer, and scholar with over 20 years of experience in historical performance, cross-cultural research, and arts innovation. His expertise spans music from the mid-15th century to today, encompassing classical, folk, and popular traditions. He pioneered Global Performance Practice, a forward-thinking approach merging historical performance with diverse global musical traditions.

As the founder and director of the period-instrument ensemble L’Avventura London, Žak is internationally recognised for his artistic vision and scholarship. Praised for his “excellent musicianship” and “searching intellect and wry imagination…beautiful, fluent playing” (Gramophone), he leads projects based on his original research, performing editions, and arrangements. His ensemble has performed at major festivals and venues internationally, including the Kölner Philharmonie (Cologne), Grande Auditório Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), and the Queen’s Hall (Edinburgh).

Beyond historical performance, Žak is a leading innovator in applied neuroaesthetics, exploring how music and the arts impact brain function, health, and behaviour. As founding director and CEO of the Ozmo Institute for Neuroaesthetics, he collaborates with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center to investigate the transformative power of music, dance, visual arts, and architecture in healthcare, education, and community settings.

A passionate educator and advocate for interdisciplinary research, Žak frequently shares his insights on BBC Radio 3 and NPR. In 2019, he delivered a TEDx Talk titled “Why Refugees Are Integral to the Future of Art.” Since 2021, he has also been the producer and host of Music and Medicine, a monthly radio show on WYXR Memphis, available on Spotify, Audible, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.

Research Interests and Supervision Areas

• Global Performance Practice (including African musical influences in Western music before 1800)
• Historical Performance Practice
• Neuroaesthetics
• Music and Conflict: War, Revolutions, and Pandemics
• Music and Society
• Entrepreneurship