Publications
E-mail: R.BecklesWillson@rhul.ac.uk

Rachel Beckles Willson is a Reader in the Department of Music at Royal Holloway, which she joined in 2003 having taught at the University of Bristol. Her research interests lie primarily in Cold War music politics, twentieth-century music historiography, and the anthropology of music (particularly in connection with colonisation).

Her first two books were focused on Hungary, and grew out of three years' study in Budapest combined with doctoral work at King's College, London. The first examined a key moment in Hungarian music through an analytical and contextual study of György Kurtág’s The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza: A 'Concerto for Soprano and Piano' op.7 (Ashgate, 2004), and her second built outwards from that to examine broader questions of exile and national identity in Ligeti, Kurtág and Hungarian Music during the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Each of these projects was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the British Academy.

Rachel is now researching musical encounters between Palestinians and western visitors to the Middle East from 1830 to the present day, and is supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is on research leave.