Carrie Churnside

Carrie Churnside is an Associate Professor in Music and Research Degrees Coordinator at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University. She serves as Director of the Forum for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Music and chairs the Programme Committee for the 19th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music. Her research focuses on Italian Baroque vocal music, particularly sacred cantatas and their textual-musical relationships, performance contexts, and historical publishing practices.

She holds a BA (Hons, First Class) in English and Music from the University of Birmingham (2002), an MPhil on Giovanni Paolo Colonna’s cantatas, and a PhD on Bolognese sacred cantatas. Prior to joining the Conservatoire in 2010, she held a Rome Fellowship (2008–2009), researching Roman sacred cantatas. Current projects include an edited volume on mid-Baroque transitions and a study of Bolognese musical patronage, alongside an editorial work on Handel’s opera Muzio Scevola.

Her teaching spans performance practice, Italian Baroque music, and interdisciplinary topics like women and music, alongside supervising research students. She is a Council member of the Handel Institute and contributes to international research initiatives such as the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe and the Aural Histories: Coventry VR project.