Paul Watt

Paul Watt

Elder Conservatorium of Music

Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD - email supervisor to discuss availability.

Paul Watt is Adjunct Professor of Music in the University of Adelaide. His research crosses a range of fields including nineteenth-century music, musical biography and criticism, popular music, intellectual history and religious and literary studies. He is the author of three books, Ernest Newman: A Critical Biography (2017) ; The Regulation and Reform of Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century England (2018) and Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2023). His articles have been published in a variety of journals including Music & Letters, the Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 19th-century Music and the Yale Journal of Music & Religion. He is co-editor of a number of books including The Oxford Handbook of Music and Intellectual Culture in the Nineteenth Century (with Sarah Collins and Michael Allis, 2020) and the award-winning book, Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic and Musical Patriot (with Anne-Marie Forbes, 2017).

Paul’s research has been funded by fellowships from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Early Career Research Award, 2012–2015), and the European Commission’s Senior Fellowship Program (2016), which was undertaken in the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University. Paul has also held visiting fellowships in the Institute of Music Research, University of London (2009), the Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas, Austin (2010), the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Durham University (2017), and the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University (2021).

In addition to work in the university sector, Paul is Director of the Street Music Research Unit. The Unit is affiliated with The Busking Project, a non-profit organisation in Berlin, that promotes busking and street performance around the world. Paul also serves on various editorial boards including Journal of Music Research Online, Musicology Australia, Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, the RMA Research Chronicle and ‘Studies in British Musical Cultures’, a book series published by Clemson University Press.

Paul Watt is Adjunct Professor of Music in The University of Adelaide. His research crosses a range of fields including nineteenth-century music, musical biography and criticism, popular music, intellectual history and religious and literary studies. He is the author of two books, Ernest Newman: A Critical Biography (2017) and The Regulation and Reform of Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century England (2018). His articles have been published in a variety of journals including Music & Letters, the Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 19th-century Music and the Yale Journal of Music & Religion. He is co-editor of a number of books including The Oxford Handbook of Music and Intellectual Culture in the Nineteenth Century (with Sarah Collins and Michael Allis, 2020) and the award-winning book, Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic and Musical Patriot (with Anne-Marie Forbes, 2017). 

Paul’s research has been funded by fellowships from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Early Career Research Award, 2012–2015), and the European Commission’s Senior Fellowship Program (2016), which was undertaken in the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University. Paul has also held visiting fellowships in the Institute of Music Research, University of London (2009), the Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas, Austin (2010), the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Durham University (2017), and the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University (2021).

In addition to work in the university sector, Paul is Director of the Street Music Research Unit. The Unit is affiliated with The Busking Project, a non-profit organisation in Berlin, that promotes busking and street performance around the world. Paul also serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Music Research Online, Musicology Australia, Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, the RMA Research Chronicle and ‘Studies in British Musical Cultures’, a book series published by Clemson University Press. 

  • Appointments
    Date Position Institution name
    2021 - ongoing Adjunct Professor of Musicology The University of Adelaide
    2021 - ongoing Director The Busking Project

  • Education
    Date Institution name Country Title
    2009 The University of Sydney Australia PhD
    1992 Monash University Australia MA
    1990 Australian Catholic University Melbourne BMus

  • Certifications
    Date Title Institution name Country
    2015 Certificate of Academic Practice Monash University -

  • Journals
    Year Citation
    2024 Watt, P. (2024). How Did Nineteenth-Century Singers Care for Their Voice?. Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 1-29.
    DOI
    2024 Watt, P., Green, B., Baker, A., Bennett, A., & Long, P. (2024). Australia’s hidden musicians: education and training in rural and regional areas. Music Education Research, 26(2), 127-139.
    DOI
    2023 Watt, P., & Oates, J. (2023). Colonial Mobility and the Cultural Replication of British Music: Granville Bantock's Australian Tour, 1938-1939. Music and Letters, 104(3), 443-477.
    DOI
    2022 Watt, P. (2022). Representations of Jesus in Australian Poetry in the 1950s. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 35(1), 24-38.
    DOI
    2020 Watt, P. (2020). Marie Lloyd (1870–1922) and biographical constructions of the nineteenth-century female superstar. Nineteenth Century Music, 44(2), 119-130.
    DOI Scopus1
    2019 Watt, P. (2019). Buskers and busking in australia in the nineteenth century. Musicology Australia, 41(1), 22-35.
    DOI Scopus3 WoS2
    2019 Watt, P. (2019). Jacques Barzun’s Berlioz and the Romantic Century (1950): A Musicological Brontosaurus?. Journal of Musicological Research, 38(3-4), 298-312.
    DOI Scopus1 WoS2
    2019 Wiley, C., & Watt, P. (2019). Musical Biography in the Musicological Arena. Journal of Musicological Research, 38(3-4), 187-192.
    DOI Scopus3 WoS2
    2019 Watt, P. (2019). The Function of Hymns in the Liturgical Life of Malcolm Quin's Positivist Church, 1878–1905. Yale Journal of Music and Religion, 5(1), 1-20.
    DOI
    2018 Watt, P. (2018). Street Music in the Nineteenth Century: Histories and Historiographies. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 15(1), 3-8.
    DOI Scopus3 WoS1
    2018 Watt, P. (2018). Street Music in London in the Nineteenth Century: 'Evidence' from Charles Dickens, Charles Babbage and Lucy Broadwood. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 15(1), 9-22.
    DOI Scopus4
    2017 Watt, P. (2017). Musical & literary networks in the weekly critical Review, Paris, 1903-1904. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 14(1), 33-50.
    DOI Scopus3 WoS1
    2017 Watt, P. (2017). Music criticism in nineteenth-century England: How did it become a profession?. Musicologica Brunensia, 52(1), 117-126.
    DOI
    2017 Watt, P., & Collins, S. (2017). Critical networks. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 14(1), 3-8.
    DOI Scopus1
    2016 Watt, P. (2016). Editorial—Street Music: Ethnography, Performance, Theory. Journal of Musicological Research, 35(2), 69-71.
    DOI Scopus4 WoS3
    2014 Watt, P., & Rabinovici, A. (2014). Alexandra Palace: Music, leisure, and the cultivation of 'higher civilization' in the late nineteenth century. Music and Letters, 95(2), 183-212.
    DOI Scopus2 WoS2
    2014 Watt, P. (2014). Music, lyrics and cultural tropes in Australian popular songs of the first world war: Two case studies. Musicology Australia, 36(1), 90-105.
    DOI
    2014 Watt, P. (2014). Artistic crosscurrents: Critical vocabularies of literature, painting, architecture and music. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, 19(1), 1-4.
    2013 Watt, P. (2013). Ernest Newman's Draft of a Berlioz Biography (1899) and its Appropriation of Emile Hennequin's Style Theory. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 10(1), 151-168.
    DOI
    2009 Watt, P. (2009). A ‘Gigantic and Popular Place of Entertainment’: Granville Bantock and Music-Making at the New Brighton Tower in the Late 1890s. Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 42, 109-164.
    DOI
    2007 Watt, P. (2007). The catalogue of Ernest Newman’s library: revelations about his intellectual life in the 1890s’gue of Ernest Newman’s library. Script and Print: bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 31(2), 81-103.
    2006 Watt, P. (2006). Ernest Newman’s The Man Liszt of 1934: reading its freethought agenda. Context: Journal of Music Research, 31, 193-205.

  • Books
    Year Citation
    2024 Macarthur, S., Szuster, J., & Watt, P. (2024). Cultures of Work, the Neoliberal Environment and Music in Higher Education (Vol. Part F2497). S. Macarthur, J. Szuster, & P. Watt (Eds.), Cham: Switzerland: Palgrave.
    DOI
    2024 Allis, M., & Watt, P. (2024). The Reminiscences and Selected Criticism of Herbert Thompson.
    2023 Watt, P. (2023). Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Boydell & Brewer.
    2022 Spedding, P., Watt, P., Cray, E., Gregory, D., & Scott, D. B. (2022). Bawdy songbooks of the romantic period.
    DOI
    2020 Watt, P., Collins, S., & Allis, M. (2020). The oxford handbook of music and intellectual culture in the nineteenth century. P. Watt, S. Collins, & M. Allis (Eds.), Oxford University Press.
    DOI Scopus4
    2020 Allis, M., & Watt, P. (2020). The Symphonic Poem in Britain, 1850-1950. Boydell & Brewer.
    2018 Watt, P. (2018). The Regulation and Reform of Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century England. Routledge.
    2017 Watt, P. (2017). Ernest Newman A Critical Biography. Boydell & Brewer.
    2017 Watt, P., Scott, D. B., & Spedding, P. (2017). Cheap print and popular song in the nineteenth century: A cultural history of the songster. P. Watt, D. B. Scott, & P. Spedding (Eds.), Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus4
    2014 Watt, P., & Forbes, A. -M. (2014). Joseph Holbrooke Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot. Rowman & Littlefield.

  • Book Chapters
    Year Citation
    2024 Szuster, J., & Watt, P. (2024). The Practice-led PhD in Music: Where is it Headed?. In S. Macarthur, J. Szuster, & P. Watt (Eds.), Cultures of Work, the Neoliberal Environment and Music in Higher Education (Vol. Part F2497, 1 ed., pp. 183-202). Cham: Switzerland: Palgrave.
    DOI
    2024 Macarthur, S., Szuster, J., & Watt, P. (2024). Cultures of Work, the Neoliberal Environment, and Music in Higher Education. In S. Macarthur, J. Szuster, & P. Watt (Eds.), Cultures of Work, the Neoliberal Environment and Music in Higher Education (pp. 1-14). Cham: Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
    2021 Watt, P. (2021). Music. In M. Ruse, & S. Bullivant (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Atheism (pp. 703-719). Cambridge University Press.
    2020 Watt, P. (2020). The Symphonic Poem and British Music Criticism. In M. Allis, & P. Watt (Eds.), The Symphonic Poem in Britain, 1850-1950 (pp. 55). Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
    2020 Watt, P. (2020). The Symphonic Poem and British Music Criticism. In M. Allis, & P. Watt (Eds.), The Symphonic Poem in Britain, 1850-1950 (pp. 55). Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
    2020 Spedding, P., & Watt, P. (2020). Towards a history and performance context of a forgotten repertory. In P. Spedding, & P. Watt (Eds.), Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period, Volume 1 (pp. xv-xxv). London: Routledge.
    2020 Spedding, P., & Watt, P. (2020). Towards a history and performance context of a forgotten repertory. In P. Spedding, & P. Watt (Eds.), Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period, Volume 1 (pp. xv-xxv). London: Routledge.
    2020 Watt, P., Collins, S., & Allis, M. (2020). Introduction: Music and intellectual culture in the nineteenth century. In Unknown Book (pp. 1-11).
    2020 Watt, P. (2020). Street performers and street culture. In Routledge Handbook of Street Culture (pp. 38-47).
    Scopus6
    2020 Watt, P. (2020). Newspapers, little magazines, and anthologies. In P. Watt, S. Collins, & M. Allis (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music and Intellectual Culture in the Nineteenth Century (pp. 191-208). Oxford University Press.
    DOI
    2019 Watt, P. (2019). British music criticism, 1890-1945. In The Cambridge History of Music Criticism (pp. 371-391). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus4
    2018 Watt, P. (2018). The rise of the professional music critic in nineteenth-century England. In R. Golding (Ed.), The Music Profession in Britain, 1780-1920: New Perspectives on Status and Identity (pp. 110-127). Routledge.
    DOI Scopus1
    2018 Watt, P. (2018). Ernest Newman and the promise of method in criticism, history and biography at the fin de siècle. In J. Dibble, & J. Horton (Eds.), British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought, 1850-1950 (pp. 84-101). Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
    2017 Watt, P. (2017). The prefaces to songsters: The law, aesthetics, performers and their reputations. In P. Watt, D. B. Scott, & P. Spedding (Eds.), Cheap Print and Popular Song in the Nineteenth Century: A Cultural History of the Songster (pp. 32-46). United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
    DOI
    2017 Watt, P., Scott, D. B., & Spedding, P. (2017). The nineteenth-century songster: Recovering a lost musical artefact. In Cheap Print and Popular Song in the Nineteenth Century: A Cultural History of the Songster (pp. 1-8). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus3
    2014 Watt, P., & Forbes, A. -M. (2014). Situating Holbrooke in British musical history. In P. Watt, & A. -M. Forbes (Eds.), Joseph Holbrooke Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot (pp. 1-8). New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
    2014 Watt, P., & Forbes, A. -M. (2014). Situating Holbrooke in British musical history. In P. Watt, & A. -M. Forbes (Eds.), Joseph Holbrooke Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot (pp. 1-8). New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
    2014 Watt, P. (2014). A “Nationalist in art”: Holbrooke’s Contemporary British Composers (1925). In P. Watt, & A. -M. Forbes (Eds.), Joseph Holbrooke Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot (pp. 153-174). New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
    2014 Watt, P. (2014). A “Nationalist in art”: Holbrooke’s Contemporary British Composers (1925). In P. Watt, & A. -M. Forbes (Eds.), Joseph Holbrooke Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot (pp. 153-174). New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
    2014 Watt, P. (2014). Critics. In H. Greenwald (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Opera (pp. 881-898). New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Original Creative Works
    Year Citation
    2023 Authors: Watt P. Title: Musicians of Bath and Beyond: Edward Loder (1809-1865) and His Family (Music in Britain, 1600-2000). Description: N/A. Extent: 3 pages.
    DOI

Professor Paul Watt has held numerous research grants including an ARC DECRA (2012–2015) and a European Commission Program 7 Senior Research Fellowship in the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University (2017). 

He has also held the following competitive fellowships:

2021 Humanities Research Centre Research Fellow, Australian National University, July–October

2017 European Commission Seventh Program Senior Research Fellow, Durham University, January and February

2016 Inaugural International Research Fellow, Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies, Durham University, January and February

2015 Visiting Research Fellow, University of Huddersfield (until 2019)

2010 Alfred A. Knopf and Blanche W. Knopf Fellowship, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, 22–29 July

2009 Visiting Fellow, Institute of Musical Research, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, June–July

  • Consulting/Advisories
    Date Institution Department Organisation Type Country
    2021 - ongoing The Busking Project Research Cultural or historical Germany

  • Editorial Boards
    Date Role Editorial Board Name Institution Country
    2024 - ongoing Editor Advances in Nineteenth Century Studies Taylor & Frances United Kingdom
    2023 - ongoing Board Member Musicology Australia Taylor & Francis Australia
    2023 - ongoing Board Member Music and Migration: Sounds of Movement Lexington Books United States
    2020 - ongoing Board Member Journal of Music Research Online The University of Adelaide Australia
    2019 - ongoing Board Member Global Nineteenth Century Studies Global Nineteenth Century Studies Association United Kingdom
    2019 - ongoing Board Member Studies in British Music Cultures Clemson University Press United States
    2017 - ongoing Associate Editor Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle Royal Musical Association United Kingdom

  • Offices Held
    Date Office Name Institution Country
    2024 - ongoing Editorial Manager, Journal of Religious History University of Divinity Australia
Connect With Me
External Profiles