Leverhulme Fellowship for Professor Emma Sutton

Professor Emma Sutton from the School of English has been awarded The Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.

It will enable Professor Sutton to complete the first book on the role of music in the life and work of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, and an innovative case-study of music’s role in colonial history.

Stevenson – a self-taught composer of over 130 musical works – spent the last six years of his life in Oceania. He studied and collected Pacific music and performed with musicians from Sāmoan workers to the Hawai‘ian monarchs.

Professor Sutton’s book will document music’s role in colonisation and indigenous resistance to it across the Pacific and is informed by a decade’s archival work in Oceania. It explores these forgotten musical networks, providing a wealth of new information about Stevenson and the Pacific musicians he knew. The monograph is part of a project co-created in long-term collaboration with indigenous Pacific musicians and partners for whom the fellowship includes funds.

The wider research project has created bi-lingual public-facing resources on customary Samoan music in collaboration with National University of Samoa. Led by Susau Solomona, the NUS team have gathered cultural knowledge about Samoan music from more than sixty elders and are developing pedagogical resources from primary to Higher Education level.

Professor Sutton said: “I’m delighted to have been given this precious opportunity and very grateful for the long-term collaborations with indigenous partners, whose work is also recognised and supported by the award.”