Katherine Hambridge

Dr. Katherine Hambridge is an Associate Professor in the Department of Music at Durham University, specializing in French and German music culture between the revolutions of 1789 and 1848. Her research focuses on music and politics, popular music theatre, and voice studies, with a particular emphasis on gender and national identity. She holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Warwick. Her monograph Performing Politics: Music and Theater in Berlin c. 1800 (University of Chicago Press, 2026) examines musical and political modernity through Berlin’s theatres during the Napoleonic era. She has curated exhibitions, including The Last Stand: Napoleon’s 100 Days in 100 Objects, and collaborates with institutions like the Royal Northern Sinfonia and the British Museum to bridge academic research and public engagement.

Her research interests include genre categorization, performance practice, and the intersection of music with gender and politics. Notable awards include the 2016 Jerome Roche Prize for her Journal of the American Musicological Society article on wartime theatre in Berlin. She co-edited The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790-1820 (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and leads workshops reconstructing 19th-century performance practices.

• Education:
  • Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Music at the University of Cambridge
  • Organ scholar at Girton College and Worcester Cathedral
• Research Highlights:
  • Monograph on Berlin’s theatres and political modernity
  • Work on the German singing voice and gendered rhetoric
  • Performance-based research reconstructing melodramas
• Engagement:
  • Public lectures at the V&A and BBC Radio 4 appearances
  • Collaborations with museums and orchestras