Part-time Lecturers

Bláithín's research focuses on a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis and interpretation of nineteenth and twentieth century popular song. This encompasses music theory and analysis, sound studies, performance studies, film studies, music and philosophy, analysing the singing voice, and linguistics. In 2020, Bláithín was the inaugural recipient of the Society for Musicology in Ireland Harry White Doctoral medal for her PhD thesis 'Paralanguage and The Beatles'.

Bio: Dr Aisling Kenny teaches on performance modules on BA (Joint Honours) and the Masters in Choral Studies through workshops and thesis supervision. She is an established performer of early music in Ireland as a soloist and ensemble singer and regularly works with leading ensembles including Resurgam, Sestina, Irish Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir Ireland. As a vocal coach, she is frequently invited to give workshops on vocal technique and recently led workshops for DCU's Choral Leadership Day. She has worked as a guest vocal coach on courses for Sing Ireland and the Kodály International Summer Course and has given masterclasses and coached on chamber music at the Cork School of Music. Aisling has taught in the music departments of Maynooth University, St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dundalk Institute of Technology, the Irish College of Musical Theatre (deputy) and as a guest lecturer on the MA in String Performance at the Irish World Academy, UL. 

Aisling studied music at Maynooth University and completed a Masters in Performance at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Basel, Switzerland. She holds a Ph.D. from Maynooth University where she completed a dissertation on Josephine Lang’s Lieder under the supervision of Dr Lorraine Byrne Bodley. At Maynooth, she was a John Hume and IRCHSS scholar and her studies in Basel were funded by a scholarship from the Cantilena Stiftung. Aisling has presented at conferences throughout Ireland and Europe. She is regularly invited to give guest lectures and has recently presented and performed at the University of Oxford, the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. In 2011 she organised the first international conference on women and the nineteenth-century Lied which brought together an array of international scholars and performers. She is co-editor of Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied, the first book to deal with predominantly with the area with Susan Wollenberg (Ashgate/Routledge, 2015) and has contributed eighteen articles on Irish singers to the Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (UCD Press, 2013). She is a member of the steering group for the National Forum for Performance Research in Ireland, led by Prof. Una Hunt.



Aisling’s research currently focuses on the relationships between vocal technique and style in early music and historically informed performance. She welcomes informal inquiries from students interested in pursuing research in these areas at masters or doctoral level.

Bio: I completed my PhD in the Department of Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) with a dissertation on Plato’s theory of sense perception. Since finishing my PhD I have taught in the Department of Philosophy at TCD, and the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin. I am currently a part-time lecturer in the School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music at Dublin City University. My research interests lie primarily in the cognitive psychology of Plato and Aristotle, and in particular, their accounts of sense perception and its relation to belief and knowledge. I am also interested in Early Modern philosophy, particularly in the philosophy of George Berkeley. I am a core member of the Trinity Plato Centre at Trinity College Dublin.

Name: Alissa MacMillan

Areas of Teaching and Research: Early modern philosophy and religion, feminist philosophy, American pragmatism, religion and literature

Email: alissa.macmillan@dcu.ie

Bio: Most often thinking and writing about Thomas Hobbes, I received my PhD from Brown University (2013), with a dissertation on Hobbes and religion. I’m a former FWO Postdoc at the University of Antwerp (2015-2018) and a former postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France (2012-2015). My current work is on religion, curiosity, and fear in the early modern period and I also have an interest in American pragmatism (William James especially), theory of religion, and religion and literature.

Name: Róisín Nic Athlaoich

Email: roisin.nicathlaoich@dcu.ie

Bio: Róisín Nic Athlaoich is a part time lecturer in Music at Dublin City University.

Róisín currently teaches on both the Bachelor of Arts (Joint Honours) and Bachelor of Religious Education and Music undergraduate degrees. As a music lecturer at St. Patrick’s College, Róisín taught on the Bachelor of Education degree and devised a Curriculum Music course in Irish for those wishing to teach in the Gaelscoil.

Areas of specialism include: Compositional techniques, Analysis, Musicianship, Music theory, Aural training and keyboard skills.

Research: Performance and Analysis – bridging the divide between these interconnected disciplines, with a particular focus on the Unaccompanied Solo Suites by J.S Bach.

Other areas of interest include: Choral studies, Choral Conducting and Early Childhood Music Education

Róisín teaches Violin, Viola and Piano and has taught violin and viola at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. 

She has also performed with a variety of ensembles ranging from Classical (National Symphony Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, City of Dublin Chamber Orchestra) to Rock/Pop (U2, Damien Rice, Declan O Rourke, Katie Melua, Tommy Fleming, KILA, The Corrs amongst others).

Bio: I joined DCU’s School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music in 2019 as a part-time lecturer in Aesthetics. Previously, I was an occasional lecturer (History of Ethics) and a teaching assistant in the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin (UCD). I completed my PhD in the School of Philosophy at UCD with a dissertation on Max Scheler’s theory of sympathy. My PhD was funded by the Irish Research Council (2013-2017).

My research interests lie primarily in Phenomenology (especially Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger), Philosophy of Emotions, and Social Ontology. Currently, my research focuses on the relation between collective intentionality, social identity, feelings and values.

Cathal Twomey’s interest in early music encompasses a wide range of topics from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries, with a primary focus on musico-linguistics, song, and word-setting. Historical pronunciation, poetic metre, and musical rhythmic organisation play major roles in this research, which has thus far concerned early modern British music (from the Restoration to the mid-eighteenth century). It may, however, expand into Medieval and Renaissance song, as well as popular and rock music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the near future.

Cathal’s undergraduate thesis explored the musical characterisation of female protagonists in English Baroque opera, and was followed by a prize-winning master’s dissertation analysing the word-setting of William Boyce’s Solomon. Cathal’s PhD on Handel’s English-language vocal music, supervised by Dr Estelle Murphy and funded by the Hume Doctoral Fellowship, passed with minor corrections in 2021.

Cathal’s subsidiary research interests include literary linguistics, literature of the fourteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries, seventeenth-century Venetian opera (particularly its conventions and stock characters and scenes), representations of celibacy and asexuality in music (especially in opera), and tonal organisation in early modern as well as contemporary rock and pop music, with particular emphasis on ambitus (structural range) and registral space.

Bio:

Dr Clare Wilson is a part-time lecturer in Music in the School of School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music. She holds a PhD in music theory and analysis from Ulster University, a Masters in historical musicology from Maynooth University, and an Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, in addition to diplomas in piano performance, piano teaching, and special needs assisting. Clare’s research is interdisciplinary in nature, and specialises in the intersections between French music, literature, and performance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More broadly her research interests embrace areas of performative analysis, analytical approaches to music of the twentieth century, and French literature and culture from about 1870–1940. She has presented her research globally at conferences in the UK, Europe, and US. Recent work includes studies that explore the musicopoetic relationship between Baudelaire and Caplet, and studies to develop rhythmic strategies to analyse Caplet’s Fort settings: Cinq Ballades Françaises (1919–1920) and other mélodies. Clare’s approaches to pedagogy are founded upon principles that embrace practice-led methods and reflective and critical engagement with musical materials, as well as creativity, integration, and inclusivity.