As a new academic year starts, we are thrilled to welcome three new appointments for Dr Daniel Elphick, Nathan James Dearden, and Dr Fatima Lahham in the Music department at RHUL

Dr Daniel Elphick (Teaching Fellow in Royal Holloway Music since 2017) will start as Lecturer in Musicology, covering for Prof. Julian Johnson during his Wolfson Research Professorship. Dan’s research focuses on the history and analysis of Russian and Central-Eastern European Music from 1800 to the present, with particular interests in questions of politics and propaganda, with additional interests in music and the Holocaust, popular music, music and Marxism, and the politics of music education. Dan is a Fellow of the Centre for Russian Music (Goldsmiths, University of London), and a member of the Editorial Board for DSCH, the Shostakovich Journal, and has given invited lectures in Moscow, Vienna, and Warsaw. Upcoming projects include representations of Shostakovich in Soviet Theatre, a study on Socialist Realism in Music, and an analytical overview of Grażyna Bacewicz. Dan’s first book, Music Behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and his Polish Contemporaries, is available in paperback from Cambridge University Press. 

Also joining the Department of Music at Royal Holloway for 2022-23 is Nathan James Dearden as Lecturer in Music Composition and Interim Director of Composition (Fixed-term post). A familiar face at Royal Holloway, Nathan will continue his role as Performance Manager at the College. His work as a composer and broader research centres around music in the community and music as a form of social commentary. He is currently writing new works for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, and the Choir of Royal Holloway as their Composer-in-Residence. Alongside teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students at Royal Holloway, he will also direct the New Music Collective and continue the role of Artistic director of the Picture Gallery Composer-in-Residence scheme. Nathan comments: “I am thrilled to accept this position at Royal Holloway. I have worked at the College for some years in various capacities, and I am continually reminded how creative and innovative the community is. I am excited to join the Composition faculty for the coming academic year and continue its commitment to support and nurture this world-class research and talent.”

Dr Fatima Lahham will also be joining the department, having been appointed as Teaching Fellow in Music (2022-23). Fatima completed her PhD in Music at Cambridge University in July 2022, where her thesis was on decolonial feminist approaches to historical improvisation. Fatima’s research interests include improvisation studies, early modern histories of England and the Ottoman empire, music and Islam, and music and ecology. Fatima is a professional musician as well as teacher and researcher, and as a recorder player she performs all over the UK and Europe. Since graduating from the Royal College of Music in 2016, Fatima has lectured in the Historical Performance faculty and currently runs her own course on improvisation. Fatima’s debut solo album, bulbul, will be released on FS Records later in the month on September 30.