Research Events & Seminars
At Trinity Laban we host a wide range of research events throughout the year, from seminars and symposia to conferences, performances, concerts and professional development.
Our events offer opportunities for staff and students to learn and develop, share best practice and findings and get support.
Our public research events allow our research community to share their knowledge and expertise and engage with a wider audience in London and around the world.
Public research events
Creative Health Research: The Language of Pain (2026)
Online event: Tue 15 September 2026
The Language of Pain is a creative health research project led by Trinity Laban that gives ‘voice’ to the invisible and often denied experience of chronic illness and pain. Trinity Laban and the Language of Pain Collective present this online event to share our creative health research.
Recent highlights
25 Years of Dance Science at Trinity Laban (2026)
Trinity Laban marked 25 years of the MSc Dance Science programme with a special symposium and community celebration honouring a quarter century of research, practice, collaboration and innovation.
Find out more
Women’s Work in Music Conference (2025)
The Fifth International Conference on Women’s Work in Music: Brave New Worlds aimed to both celebrate the achievements of women musicians, and to critically explore and discuss the changing contexts of women’s work in music on the international stage.
Find out more
Jazz Research Symposium: Lift the Bandstand (2025)
Lift The Bandstand is the first symposium of its kind at Trinity Laban that specifically addresses practice, research, and ideas surrounding Jazz and Improvisation.
Find out more
Parallax: Showcase Series
Parallax is our showcase event series for our research staff and Creative Practice research students. From mixed media installations and presentations, to live performances that manifest artistic practice, these events explore and showcase the latest research themes at Trinity Laban.
Recent highlights
The Fidelio Trio: 'Interlace'
The Fidelio Trio present: ‘interlace’ plus new student works
Opening the New Lights Festival 2026, the internationally–renowned Fidelio Trio presented the world premiere of ‘interlace’ by Professor of Composition Sam Hayden alongside the first public performances of selected new student works specially written for the trio during a mini-residency at Trinity Laban.
Trinity Laban student
and staff research events
Professional development
We offer our research students and staff an extensive programme of professional development events throughout the year. Events take place between January and June and are announced in the autumn term.
Research Students at Trinity Laban are also invited to attend Shared ConservatoiresUK Postgraduate Researcher Training Events – a specialised programme of online events open to research students across the CUK network. The 2025-26 programme of events is available here.
Research groups & projects
Research Groups at Trinity Laban place Thinking Through Practice at the core of their work and evolve each year to meet the needs of our research staff and students.
The Composition Research Group, led by Dr Dominic Murcott, provides new opportunities for collaboration and performance for our vibrant group of composition researchers.
The annual Research Composition Project provides a platform for research students to compose works for recording and concert performance by professional ensembles in a mini-residency, such as the Fidelio Trio.
The Jazz Research Group, led by Dr Tomas Challenger, meets regularly as a community exploring core themes of improvisation, rhythm and jazz pedagogy. Their work is showcased in the annual Jazz Research Symposium: Lift the Bandstand.
The Dance Research Group, led by Dr Naomi Lefebvre Sell and Dr Lucia Piquero, supports researchers in creative practice, dance science and dance pedagogy, and presents regular Dance and Performance Studies Reading Group sessions, led by Dr Rebecca Stancliffe.
The Performance Philosophy Research Group brings masters-level students, research students and staff together to explore the philosophy of performance across artforms.
The Performance and Musicology Research Group and the Pedagogy Research Group formed in 2026-27 to support the evolving research environment of staff and students at Trinity Laban and they look forward to developing new research events and projects.
Thinking Through Practice
The Thinking Through Practice Research Forum evolved from the Sounding Moves | Moving Sound online forum and meets termly on Wednesday afternoons online, led by Professor Sam Hayden.
The forum was set-up to enable and encourage cross-disciplinary contact and collaboration within Trinity Laban at a research level. It is primarily intended to be an informal and open context for the sharing of work, whether practice-based, text-based, visual arts or any other media. Cross-disciplinary projects that specifically engage with interfaces between music and dance are encouraged.
The Thinking Through Practice Conference will take place in 2027 and builds on previous successful Sounding Moves | Moving Sound (SMMS) symposia, exploring the relationship between music and dance at Trinity Laban. Read more about past SMMS Events in the research events archive.
Satyam Kalon Seminar Series
In June 2026, Trinity Laban welcomed scholars and academics from leading institutions across India, the United Kingdom and the United States to the inaugural Satyam Kalon London Seminar Series.
Driven by philanthropic support, the Satyam Kalon Programme offers scholarships, research grants, and senior-level teaching to a select cohort of artists and scholars. Read more about the inaugural seminar series or download the full programme here.
RDP Presentation Week
We offer a week of online and in-person events for our research students during which they share their project progress with their colleagues in a supportive environment.
RDP Presentation Week Schedule March 2026
Our 2025 RDP presentations included the following topics:
- Teal Darkenwald: Mapping Sound to Movement to Create a Novel Retraining Method for Dancers
- Jui-Ying Huang: The Next Step: Intersection and Reimagination of Marching and Minimalism Music
- Morad Kashef: Integrating Azerbaijani Mugham techniques with 20th-century European orchestral traditions, particularly aleatoric and chance music
- Felice Pomeranz: Findings from interviews, surveys, and a musical vignette, developed from the research topic ‘The Patriarchy of Jazz: The Emergence of Women and Unusual Instruments in a Male-Dominated Art Form’
- Davood Jafari: Polyphonic composition based on Persian music
- Charlotte Eaton: Embodying tactile-kinaesthetic imagery: reimagining bodily/fleshly experience through Somatic Improvisation & expanding its contributions to dance practice, process and product
- Byron Wallen: The Confluence of Melody, Rhythm and Harmony: Investigating Circular and Linear concepts within large scale composition
- Maya Rosenwasser: Reflections on the research topic: Queer(ing) Sounds: An exploration of London’s LGBTQIA+ community through electroacoustic music practices
- Ying Chen: The changing styles in Robert Schumann’s piano music, according to his different compositional periods
- Xinyu Liu: Exploring Strategies for Integrating Classical and Contemporary Elements into Participatory Music Performances
- Filippo Ieraci: Polyphonic and Contrapuntal Techniques in M. Giuliani and M. Carcassi: Composing Two Guitar Etudes
- Gloria Yehilevsky: un/intentional improvisational-compositional realisations exploring cognitive sources
- Graham Devine: Reflections on the research topic: J S Bach complete lute works: performance guide to new transcriptions and complete work recordings for the ten-string guitar
Research Seminars
The Research Seminar Series is busy programme of presentations by the Trinity Laban research community presenting current research to staff and students across the institution.
When: Wednesday afternoons
Booking: No booking required.
Research Seminar Series 2026-27 will be published here in September 2026. Past Research Seminars can be found here.
Please contact Research Administrator Sara Pay S.Pay@trinitylaban.ac.uk with any questions.
Previous events
Discover the range of research events and seminars held at Trinity Laban by exploring our events archive.
Contact us
Please contact our Research Administrator Sara Pay to find out more about upcoming events.