Ben Nicholls and Isabelle Watson Awarded Prizes at the Musicological Society of Australia (SA Chapter) Research Day 2024

The SA Chapter of the Musicological Society of Australia held their annual Research Day on Saturday 16 November in the Madley Rehearsal Studio. The day featured a wonderfully varied lineup of terrific presentations from current PhD candidates Fiona McArdle ('The Composer's Influence: Elena Kats-Chernin's Setting of Oodgeroo Noonuccal's Tree Grave'), Isabelle Watson ('Looking Backwards to Go Forwards: Experimenting with Nineteenth-Century Expressive Devices in Robert Schumann's Violin Works') and Anna Henwood ('Santa Cecilia: Reforming a Conservatorio'); current History PhD candidate and BMus alumnus Ben Nicholls ('Pianos in Australian Homes and Australian History'); Dr Tom Benjamin, Adjunct Lecturer in the Adelaide Medical School ('No Bridge Too Far: Primary to Pop'); Gillian Dooley, new MSA/SA Chapter President ('Turning Jane Austen's Mansfield Park Into an Opera'); Dr Jane Southwood, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia ('Singing Waters'); and SA Music critic Dr Graham Strahle, who delivered a fascinating keynote ('Wagner and the Critics').

Congratulations to Ben Nicholls, who received the 2024 Naomi Cumming Prize (for a postgraduate student at any SA institution), and Isabelle Watson, who received the 2024 Elder Conservatorium Prize for Excellence in Postgraduate Research (for a postgraduate student at the Elder Conservatorium).