Students

The postgraduate programme in new music draws students from across the world, currently with over 50 students from 24 countries. CeReNeM’s student community encompasses young artists in the earliest stages of their careers as well as leading musicians and scholars with significant international reputations, and our programmes are designed to support a wide range of experiences, backgrounds, and aspirations. Our students are ambitious and imaginative, and their work often sits at the boundaries of established practice or at the intersection of multiple traditions and cultures.

Our MA and PhD programmes are notable for their flexibility and for the degree to which original and innovative approaches to artistic research are supported and encouraged. Our students include composers, performers, improvisors, programmers, musicologists, curators, and sonic artists, and the aesthetic and stylistic pursuits of our community are extremely varied, including diverse approaches to concert music, electronic music, experimental music and performance art, installations, commercial music, music for film and screen, and community music. Most importantly, many of our students move freely between these roles and disciplines, or combine them in distinctive ways. Our culture is one that eschews dogma and encourages risk; it is ecumenical, diverse, and open. 

CeReNeM is an inclusive community, and is a signatory to the Keychange initiative. We are committed to taking a leading role to foster a progressive approach to diversity in contemporary music, with a particular focus on increasing the representation of women in composition and music technology. CeReNeM’s HCR label is committed to a 50/50 gender balance by 2022, our Colloquium visiting lecture series and our postgraduate seminar series have made significant strides towards achieving 50/50 gender balance, and our Visiting Artist concert series from 2019 has required 50/50 gender balance in all programming. The University is the home to the Yorkshire Sound Women Network, providing further opportunities outside of formal academic study to increase the number of women and girls active in music technology and sonic arts.