Kimberly A. Francis

Kimberly A. Francis serves as Professor of Music and Director of the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph's College of Arts, while also affiliating with the Sexualities, Genders, and Social Change program. Her internationally recognized work champions equitable practices in musicology through interdisciplinary research spanning cultural history, gender studies, and medical humanities.

Her academic credentials include a PhD in Musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2010), awarded the Glen Haydon Award for excellence. Distinguished fellowships comprise an International Fellowship with the American Association of University Women, ERASMUS Mundus Visiting Scholarship at Sheffield University (2016), and scholar-in-residence at Potsdam University (2015).

Francis's research centers on feminist reinterpretations of musical canons, with signature projects examining Nadia Boulanger's pedagogical legacy, French sonic cultures (1850-1914), and occult engagements among interwar women composers. Her methodology uniquely bridges historical musicology with gender theory, medical discourse analysis, and religious studies to expose marginalized narratives in Western art music traditions.

Her publications reveal consistent thematic evolution from Boulanger-focused scholarship toward broader investigations of gendered knowledge production. The monograph trilogy (2015-2020) establishes foundational frameworks subsequently expanded in current SSHRC-funded projects exploring speech normalization and wartime creativity, demonstrating rigorous chronological progression from modernist studies to early 20th-century cultural intersections.

Major honors include:

• ASCAP-Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award (2016) for Teaching Stravinsky
• Glen Haydon Award for doctoral research
• AAUW International Fellowship
• ERASMUS Mundus Visiting Scholarship
• Potsdam University residency

Francis leads significant grant-funded initiatives including a five-year SSHRC Insight Grant on French phonetics (1850-1914) and SSHRC Connections Grant for the 30th Anniversary Feminist Theory & Music conference. She co-chairs the American Musicological Society's Sustainable Mentorship Program and serves as co-Editor-in-Chief for Grove Music Online's gender/sexuality content revision, reflecting dual commitments to structural reform and emerging scholar development.

Her community-engaged projects include co-curating A Sonic Tapestry—documenting Guelph musicians' pandemic responses—and organizing the 2022 international Feminist Theory & Music conference, demonstrating applied scholarship that bridges academic research with public-facing musical practice.