Leah Morrison

Leah Morrison is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Southern California (USC), specializing in plainchant, medieval liturgical practices, and 19th-century operatic traditions. She earned her PhD from USC with a dissertation focused on a fifteenth-century Carthusian plainchant manual, supported by the Huntington Library Mellon Fellowship.

• PhD in Musicology from the University of Southern California
• Heckman Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library

Her research bridges ritual studies and historical musicology, with notable contributions to Carthusian liturgy and Richard Wagner’s theatrical innovations. Her publications explore topics such as medieval chant dialects and 19th-century German scenography.

Scientific awards include:

• Huntington Library Mellon Fellowship
• Heckman Postdoctoral Fellowship

While her primary focus has been on textual and archival analysis of medieval and 19th-century musical practices, her recent selected papers address modernism in post-WWII European music and Wagnerian aesthetics.