Lecturer

Email: helen.lawlor@tudublin.ie

Dr Helen Lawlor (neé Lyons) specialises in research on music in Ireland with a focus on the musical practice, education and history of the harp.  She lectures in Irish music, music education, musicology and junior musicianship at the TU Dublin Conservatoire. She is author of Irish harping 1900–2010 (2012) and co-editor with Sandra Joyce of Harp studies: perspectives on the Irish harp (2016). Her work is also published in The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, Ancestral Imprints, Sonus, American Harp Journal, JSMI and JMI. 

Helen is Executive Editor of the Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (JSMI) and Secretary of Performance Research Ireland. She is an advisory board member of Irish Musical Studies and previously served as Chair of the Irish national committee of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM Ireland). 

In 1999 Helen graduated from Trinity College Dublin and the TU Dublin Conservatoire with a BMusED. In 2005 she graduated from UCD with a Masters in Musicology Degree before embarking on her doctoral research at UCD for which she was an Ad Astra Research Scholarship recipient. Her PhD (2010) was supervised by Professor Thérèse Smith and subsequently published as her first monograph by Four Courts Press (2012). 

Current research projects include: Harp Studies II: World Harp Traditions (in preparation, 2022) and Sounding Empowerment, an edited collection of essays co-edited with Adrian Scahill. Her research is grounded in the discipline of ethnomusicology, drawing also on performance practice and musicological methodologies. 

Helen has shared her research both nationally and internationally. She has lectured/performed at Harvard University, Boston College, New York University, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, University of Limerick, University College Dublin and at many music festivals including the Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy and Gaelic Roots. Television appearances include: Comhluadar Ceoil (2021, TG4) and The Flourishing (2022, RTE 1). 

Helen has supervised PhDs and Masters by research in Irish traditional music, arts practice, ethnomusicology, music education, musicology and composition. 

 

Links:

https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2012/irish-harping/

 

https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/new-year-folder/harp-studies-ii/

 

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0060-9361

 

https://www.musicologyireland.com/jsmi/index.php/journal