Staff profile

I am a musicologist interested in twentieth-century transnational and transimperial histories centred between East Asia and Central Europe. My first monograph, The Japanese Empire’s German Art Music, 1910–1945, the completion of which is supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2025/26), analyses the musico-political activities of a network of interconnected individuals in Germany, Japan, and Japanese Taiwan. Employing archival research as well as global history, critical biography studies, and theory of infrastructure as its primary methods and approaches, my research demonstrates a clear connection between Western, specifically German, art music and Japanese state- and empire-building initiatives during the first half of the twentieth century. My previous, doctoral work, completed at the University of Toronto in 2020, interrogates First World War-era representations of masculinity on the operatic stage in Germany and Austria. This work has been published as a series of articles, including publications that have received the Jerome Roche Prize and the Kurt Weill Prize.

I am committed to musicology as a globally connected discipline. Most recently, this commitment is reflected in the volume, Global Musicology: Music Histories from Elsewhere, co-edited with Vera Wolkowicz. Bringing together scholars from around the world, this book explores what we might gain by learning about the connected histories of musicologies from both outside the West but also in relation to the West. Previously, also with Wolkowicz, I organised the conference Global Musicology–Global Music History. As an active member of the discipline, I have chaired several international study groups, including the American Musicological Society’s Global East Asian Music Research Study Group (2021–2024). In 2021, I co-founded with John Gabriel the Asian-German Studies in Music Working Group, which I continue to co-organise; this group is affiliated with the International Musicological Society’s Global History of Music Study Group.

I served for five years (2021–2025) as Reviews Editor of the Royal Musical Association’s two flagship journals, the Journal of the Royal Musical Association and the Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle. In this role, I paid special attention to the linguistic and geographical diversity of the review authors and experimented with the book review as a format (please see, for example, here, here, and here).

I was one of six educators shortlisted for the Early Career Educators Award at Durham in 2025. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I teach across the undergraduate and postgraduate curricula and presently co-supervise one PhD student (women opera singers in nineteenth-century Britain). I welcome enquiries from potential PhD students and postdoctoral fellowship applicants on topics related to music and mobility, music and politics, and global music history in the East Asian and Central European contexts across the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since 2020, I have been a Faculty Affiliate of Project Spectrum, a graduate student-led coalition committed to increasing EDI in music studies in North America.

Alongside my academic work, I am developing public-facing research activities. These include public talks and my recent participation in the Being Human Festival. I have also organised a sold-out concert of Japanese art songs centred on the life and career of the twentieth-century international celebrity singer, Fujiwara Yoshie. 

I joined Durham University in 2022, having previously served as a research assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and as a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto.

• 2025 - 2026: Leverhulme Research Fellowship: awarded annually by the Leverhulme Trust 'for experienced researchers in any discipline to complete a piece of research'.
• 2023: Kurt Weill Prize: awarded biennially by the Kurt Weill Foundation for 'distinguished scholarship in the disciplines of music, theater, dance, literary criticism and history addressing music theater since 1900 (including opera)'
• 2020: Jerome Roche Prize: awarded annually by the Royal Musical Association 'for an outstanding article by a scholar in the early stages of their career'

Book review

• Review of ‘Dialogues: Towards decolonising music and dance studies’, edited by Tan Sooi Beng & Marcia Ostashewski
  
  Hsieh, A. (2023). Review of ‘Dialogues: Towards decolonising music and dance studies’, edited by Tan Sooi Beng & Marcia Ostashewski. Ethnomusicology Forum, 32(3), 461-466. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2023.2270986
• Review of Reclaiming Late-Romantic Music: Singing Devils and Distant Sounds. By Peter Franklin
  
  Hsieh, A. (2016). Review of Reclaiming Late-Romantic Music: Singing Devils and Distant Sounds. By Peter Franklin. Music and Letters, 97(4), 659-661. https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcw091
• Review of Masculinity in Opera: Gender, History, and New Musicology. Edited by Philip Purvis
  
  Hsieh, A. (2016). Review of Masculinity in Opera: Gender, History, and New Musicology. Edited by Philip Purvis. Music and Letters, 97(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcw062

Chapter in book

• Consuming Operetta: Gender, Genre and the Bandmann Opera Company in Early Twentieth-Century Japan
  
  Hsieh, A. (in press). Consuming Operetta: Gender, Genre and the Bandmann Opera Company in Early Twentieth-Century Japan. In C. Rowden, P. Mugayar Kühl, & B. Gentili (Eds.), Opera in Transnational Context: Circulating Identities and Cultures. Routledge.
• Sounding Fascism: Europe’s Musical Gifts to Japan on the Occasion of the Empire’s 2600th Anniversary
  
  Hsieh, A. (n.d.). Sounding Fascism: Europe’s Musical Gifts to Japan on the Occasion of the Empire’s 2600th Anniversary. In H. K. H. Chang, H. Law, & N. Y. Rao (Eds.), Music and Sound in Transpacific East Asia. Palgrave Macmillan.

Edited book

• Global Musicology: Music Histories from Elsewhere
  
  Hsieh, A., & Wolkowicz, V. (Eds.). (2025). Global Musicology: Music Histories from Elsewhere. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-01489-4

Journal Article

• Globalizing Comparative Musicology? Inter-Asian Perspectives on Global Music History
  
  Hsieh, A., & Olley, J. (2025). Globalizing Comparative Musicology? Inter-Asian Perspectives on Global Music History. Music and Letters. Advance online publication, Article gcaf044. https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcaf044
• Jewish Difference and Recovering ‘Commedia’: Erich W. Korngold’s ‘Die tote Stadt’ in Post-First World War Austria
  
  Hsieh, A. (2022). Jewish Difference and Recovering ‘Commedia’: Erich W. Korngold’s ‘Die tote Stadt’ in Post-First World War Austria. Music and Letters, 103(4), 685-707. https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcac043
• The Mask of Bourgeois Masculinity and Franz Schreker’s _Die Gezeichneten_
  
  Hsieh, A. (2022). The Mask of Bourgeois Masculinity and Franz Schreker’s _Die Gezeichneten_. Cambridge Opera Journal, 34(3), 338-363. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954586722000246
• Lyrical Tension, Collective Voices: Masculinity in Alban Berg's _Wozzeck_
  
  Hsieh, A. (2019). Lyrical Tension, Collective Voices: Masculinity in Alban Berg’s _Wozzeck_. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 144(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2019.1651496