Kerry Murphy

Biography

Kerry Murphy did her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of Melbourne. The research for her PhD The Formation of the Music Criticism of Hector Berlioz (1984) was done under the joint supervision of M. François Lesure (Ecole des hautes à tudes, Paris) and Meredith Moon (the University of Melbourne). While studying in Paris from 1980-82 she participated in the Musicology seminars run by Lesure at the Ecole des hautes à tudes. Before taking up her lecturing job at the Faculty of Music at the University of Melbourne she worked as an assistant archivist at the Grainger Museum and lecturer at the Australian Catholic University and the Canberra School of Music. In 1990 she was awarded a Melbourne University Research Fellowship for Women with Career Interruptions, which she shared with a lectureship at the University of Melbourne.

Kerry Murphy has attracted substantial external peer-reviewed grants from the Australian Research Council and has convened or co-convened a number of significant conferences, including Music Audience (2001, keynote Stephen Banfield, Birmingham), the National conference of the Musicological Society of Australia (2002) and an international Symposium on 19th Century French music (2004).

She is a founding member of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Network Francophone Music Criticism 1789-1914, and since 2006 has been an Honorary Associate (and Australian corresponding member) of the Centre for the History of Music in Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth (UK). She is also a member of the artistic advisory board of the Victorian Opera Company.

Kerry Murphy’s research interests focus chiefly on 19th-century French music and music criticism, and colonial Australian music history.