Berta Joncus

Berta Joncus is a Reader at the University of London, based at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she serves as Research Project Lead and Principal Investigator for major grants. Appointed in 2009 and promoted to Reader in 2020, she bridges archival scholarship, practice-based research, and public musicology while actively supervising PhD candidates across diverse specializations.

Education:

• DPhil in Music, University of Oxford (1999–2004; supervised by Reinhard Strohm)
• MA, University of Bonn, Germany
• Performance Degree, Franz Schubert Conservatory of Vienna
• Early training as a child chorister with the Canadian Opera Company

Joncus’s research centers on historical musicology with dual trajectories: foundational work on 18th-century European opera (particularly ballad opera and celebrity culture) and pioneering investigations into Black cultural heritage in British music (1700–1830). Her scholarship consistently reveals how marginalized communities—including Irish networks and same-sex alliances—shaped artistic production, while her recent computational musicology projects innovate through hybrid digital-physical editions. She actively connects historical research to contemporary performance practices and social justice discourse.

Her publication trajectory shows a deliberate evolution from monographic studies of 18th-century performers (e.g., Kitty Clive’s agency in Kitty Clive, or The Fair Songster) toward decolonial frameworks examining Abolitionist song repertories. The 2025 Handel in Context chapter extends her London concert life expertise, while the 2019 critical edition of Love in a Village pioneered the first hybrid score for an English work, integrating digitized primary sources with bound publication.

Scientific Awards:

• British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (2004–2007)

Joncus mentors PhD candidates on globally diverse topics—from Qing dynasty musical encounters to Serbian art song—while leading AHRC-funded initiatives like the £500,000 Abolition Song and its Legacies project (2024–2026). This partnership with the British Library and Handel & Hendrix House mobilizes archival discoveries into live performances, demonstrating her commitment to transforming scholarly research into public-facing artistic output. Her editorial roles at Music & Letters and BBC Music Magazine further amplify academic discourse beyond traditional boundaries.

As Guildhall’s Research Project Lead for the ASaiL initiative, she coordinates interdisciplinary teams of musicologists, performers, and digital humanities specialists to reconstruct suppressed Abolitionist repertoires. This work extends her longstanding engagement with practice research, where historical investigation directly informs contemporary performance—exemplified by her direction of concerts featuring rediscovered 18th-century works.