Helen Barlow

Helen is a Research Associate in the Music Department. Her recent and current research interests focus primarily on projects in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music history, and particularly the social history of music and the ways in which ‘ordinary’ people accessed music before recording, broadcasting or mass access to education. She is most at home with an interdisciplinary approach, and finds that her background in literature and art history often suggests different angles on music history and potential sources for it.

Very much in keeping with these interests, she is currently a member of the project team for the Listening Experience Database, an AHRC-funded collaboration between the Open University and the Royal College of Music, which will bring together a mass of data about people’s personal and private experiences of listening to music across historical periods and cultures.