Professor of Musicology and Historically Informed Performance
School of Creative Arts & Industries
Professor of Musicology and Historically-Informed Performance. Director of Doctoral Studies for Music, Drama and Dance.
Robert teaches on a range of musicological and performance-related modules across the undergraduate and master's levels as well as maintaining an active role as a PhD supervisor.
Robert's first university teaching was at Royal Holloway, during his PhD, then at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge University (including as a Leverhulme Research Fellow), Birkbeck College, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and CCCU.
With over 50 scholarly publications under his belt, Robert maintains an international profile as a scholar and performer with large and varied range of publications, recordings and other engagements. His primary areas of research are music of the Czech lands and Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a special interest in intersections of music and cultural life. His outputs have often focussed on overlooked and marginalised repertoire as well as challenging modern perceptions of centre and periphery through both research and performance. His monograph _Bohemian Baroque; Czech Musical Culture and Style 1600–1750_ was praised in The Musical Times as ‘a pioneering effort [...] featuring an astonishing range of genres [...] Bohemian Baroque emphasizes the vibrant networks of Baroque music-making, uncovers long-forgotten connections, and forges scholarly dialogue in twenty-first-century Europe.’
Robert also transforms his archival and scholarly activities into concerts and commercial recordings with a global impact with hi own award-winning ensemble, The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen. Indicative of this approach is his research and CD recording of Pepusch’s 1715 masque Venus and Adonis which changed perceptions and performance practices in addition to winning, among other accolades, the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (2016, Opera), beating out the OAE and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in the shortlist. Projects like this not only reach experts and people with an interest in early music, but also make an impact outside of academia in places like The Guardian and radio programmes, newspapers and magazines around the world. His newest recording, Pepusch 'Chandos Anthems' (Accent 2023) is already scooping up prizes and was named 'Editor's Choice' in Gramophone Magazine in January 2024.
Robert is deeply embedded in international conference culture and has presented his work at over fifty conferences across Europe and in the USA—including many by invitation. He holds leadership roles on several scientific committees for conferences in the UK, Netherlands, Italy, the Czech Republic and Austria as well as being the conference chair for the Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music (held in Canterbury in 2016), hosting over 200 scholars from around the world. Robert invited to act as guest editor of Early Music for a special volume on Bohemia and Moravia (the first such volume in its 50 year history), and was also interviewed on Czech Radio on the popularity of Janáček’s operas in the UK and was invited to speak at the Proms (BBC Radio 3) to discuss the latter’s The Makropulos Affair. He was also the main speaking guest on The Early Music Show (BBC Radio 3) for a programme about J. C. Pepusch, in which several of his own recordings were also featured. An indicator of esteem, he was one of a just few dozen scholars invited to contribute to the 50th anniversary volumes of Early Music in 2023.
Other external engagements include: reviewer of research projects for the Narodowe Centrum Nauki [National Science Centre], Poland; American Philosophical Association, reviewer of proposals for the Franklin Research Grant (2015– present); External department reviewer (one of two), Department of Music, Liverpool Hope University (2013). Reviewer of Junior Research Fellowship applications, Churchill College, Cambridge University (2014); Regular peer-reviewer for articles considered by Early Music (OUP), Eighteenth-Century Music (CUP) and manuscripts for Brepols (Belgium); External PhD examining at the Royal College of Music, University of Cambridge and Trinity-Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.