Sarah Whitfield

Dr. Sarah K. Whitfield is a doctoral supervisor and Reader in Musical Theatre at the Royal College of Music, leading the Doctoral Programmes. Her research combines Digital Humanities and traditional archival methods to recover under-represented narratives in musical theatre history, focusing on marginalized figures and Queer studies. She has co-authored An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900-1950 and edited Reframing the Musical: Race, Culture and Identity.

• Academic Affiliation: Royal College of Music (current) and University of Wolverhampton (former Reader in Musical Theatre)
• Editorial Role: On the board of Studies in Musical Theatre
• Consultancy: Advises UK and US institutions like ABRSM and Music Mark

Research Interests center on:

• Digital Humanities for music education data ecosystems
• Queer Dramaturgy in works like Fun Home and Hadestown
• Race and Cultural Identity in pre-1950s British musical theatre
• Historical Revisionism to reinstate missing figures like Elsie April

Article Trends reveal a focus on:

• 20th-century musical migration patterns (e.g., 1930s migrants, Wigmore Hall archives)
• Queer and bisexual+ representation in contemporary and historical contexts
• Working-class labor narratives (e.g., theatre cleaners) and procedural audio innovation

Advising includes PhD supervision in areas like Music and Wellbeing and Digital Humanities. Key research projects span Music, Migration and Mobility and collaborations with music education charities.