We are thrilled to announce that BFE member Professor Katherine Butler Schofield is the 2025 recipient of the American Musicological Society’s prestigious Otto Kinkeldey Award for her book Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India: Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858 (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Professor Schofield’s book presents the first history of music and musicians in late Mughal India c.1748–1858 and takes the lives of nine musicians as entry points into six prominent types of writing on music in Persian, Brajbhasha, Urdu and English, moving from Delhi to Lucknow, Hyderabad, Jaipur and among the British. It shows how a key Mughal cultural field responded to the political, economic and social upheaval of the transition to British rule, while addressing a central philosophical question: can we ever recapture the ephemeral experience of music once the performance is over? These rich, diverse sources shine new light on the wider historical processes of this pivotal transitional period, and provide a new history of music, musicians and their audiences during the precise period in which North Indian classical music coalesced in its modern form. 

The American Musicological Society has shared the following citation for Professor Schofield’s award-winning work: 

"Based on exhaustive archival research and demonstrating the author’s astonishing linguistic and historical expertise, the book tells the little-known stories of nine Hindustani musicians in the fraught years of late Mughal India. Staged between a waning musical culture of classical court music and the dislocations of an encroaching British rule only slowly coming into view, a series of poignant stories unfold telling of court intrigues, musical rivalries, and colonial usurpation. But there are also heartening stories of heroic efforts by Hindustani musicians to remember, record, and memorialize the history of their musical legacy, to codify and theorize their musical practice reconceived for a new era." 

Katherine Butler Schofield is Professor of South Asian Music and History and Head of the Department of Music at King’s College London. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic and Royal Historical Societies, and a recipient of major grants from the European Research Council and the British Academy, Professor Schofield draws on Persian, Hindi, English and visual sources to tell stories about musical lives in early modern and colonial India. Her latest book, Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India: Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858, was described as a “masterpiece” by William Dalrymple, is winner of the 2025 Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society, and was one of three finalists for the 2025 Association of American Publishers Prose Award (Music Category).

We are proud to announce that the 2025 BFE-RAI Ethnomusicology Film Award has been awarded to the 2023 film 'Beyond Tradition: Power of Natural Voices', directed by BFE Committee member Dr Lea Hagmann and Rahel von Gunten.

Huge congratulations, Lea and Rahul! Read more about their wonderful film here.

We are thrilled to announce that BFE Conference Liaison Co-officer Cassandre Balosso-Bardin has received the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance prize for Best Article of 2024!

Cassandre has been awarded this prize for her 2023 article “The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe: Collaboration, Technology, Ecology, and Internationalization.” In Shaping Sound and Society, edited by Stephen Cottrell, 35-53. New York: Routledge. The prize panel said:

"This is an exemplary study of the social life of a musical instrument, engagingly written and meticulously researched. The details of the multi-stage craftsmanship and changes over time are fascinating, and we learn a great deal about this community, the players, and the instrument makers." Huge congratulations, Cassandre! 

Joint letter from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, British Forum for Ethnomusicology, DanceHE, DramaHE, Royal Musical Association, Society for Dance Research and Theatre and Performance Research Association to Rebecca Fairbairn, REF Director

Dear Rebecca Fairbairn,

We write on behalf of the above subject associations for the performing arts, in support of the letter you have received from the English Association (https://englishassociation.ac.uk/ref2029-concerns-about-the-implications-of-decoupling) and to share our concerns about the risks of non-portability of outputs for REF2029.

As you are well aware, the UK HE sector is in an extended - and for some existential - crisis. As of the date of this letter, 90 UK HEIs are reported as being in some form of restructure, voluntary severance or redundancy rounds, with arts and humanities especially impacted (source: https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking)

The UK HE community all want to ensure that REF2029 is fair, transparent, trusted and sustainable; and that any negative unintended consequences are mitigated. To that end we reinforce the points made in the open letter from the English Association, namely:

1.     That due consideration is given to output portability so that past and present employers within a census period may each claim a link to a researcher’s published outputs (within an agreed number of years following publication). We believe the removal of output portability represents restraint of trade: individual researchers will find their careers in limbo or potentially ended if their current institution retains their outputs for REF submission at the end of their employment. This situation will hamper sector mobility, as new hires with non-submissible REF outputs represent a suboptimal proposition for any new employing institution. We concur with the English Association that this will have negative impacts on universities’ responsibilities to equity, diversity, and inclusion, as it will have asymmetrical impact on careers dependent on types of contract, and who hold such contracts. The current climate of cost cutting in the sector, including redundancies, voluntary severance and restructuring bears especially on the issue of portability. We would therefore ask that HEIs should declare in their REF2029 submission the number of staff (headcount and FTE) who have left under such schemes.

2.     That the People Culture and Environment indicators and process (following explicit signals that the current pilot does not indicate the final approach) will recognise (i) the current existential challenges to the entirety of UK HE, and (ii) how these challenges manifest in different provider contexts.

We trust that this letter is received in the spirit it is sent – one of collegiality, rigour and commitment to a fair REF process which supports and not injures the UK higher education ecology. REF should nurture the collective advancement of research in every discipline in the sector, and we feel non-portability presents a significant risk to maintaining the quality and impact of outputs. The subject associations have a vital role to play in representing and stewarding the sector, and we urge you to engage with us on future consultations.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Hunter, Dr. Victor Ladron de Guevara, Dr. Rashna Nicholson, co-Chairs of DramaHE

Dr. Natalie Garrett Brown, Chair of DanceHE

Dr. Broderick Chow, Prof. Royona Mitra, co-Chairs of Theatre and Performance Research Association

Dr. Kathryn Stamp, Dr. Sinibaldo de Rosa, co-Chairs of the Society for Dance Research

Prof. Simon Keefe, President of the Royal Musical Association

Dr. Gabor Gergely, Chair of British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies

Dr. Fiorela Montero-Diaz, Chair of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology