Grade UE10: starting salary £63,673 per annum 
CAHSS / Edinburgh College of Art / Reid School of Music
Full-time: 35 hours per week
Open-ended

The University of Edinburgh’s Reid School of Music is seeking outstanding applicants for the position of Tovey Professorship in Music.  

The Opportunity:

The Reid School of Music brings together an unusually wide range of specialist expertise which spans historical and critical, scientific, technical, and creative approaches to sound and music. The post holder will specialise in any music-related area that will complement or extend these wide-ranging strengths. Woman and people of black and minoritsed ethnicities are particularly encouraged to apply.  

Applicants should have a dynamic international research profile and a strong commitment to inclusivity and accessibility in music education. The post holder will be expected to provide strategic leadership at both subject and University level, to engage in high-impact research, and contribute to the delivery and development of innovative teaching in the Reid School of Music. 

Music at the University of Edinburgh is an expanding and vibrant subject with a long-established commitment to offer a broad and diverse curriculum. In the 2021 UK Research Excellence Framework, the University of Edinburgh ranked 4th in the UK, based on the quality and breadth of its research. Over 89% of outputs in UoA33 were ranked as world-leading or internationally excellent. 

The Tovey Professorship of Music was established as a named chair at the University of Edinburgh in 1965. The first person appointed to the chair was Professor Michael Tilmouth in 1971. The chair was last held by Professor Simon Frith, 2006-17.  

As a capital city, Edinburgh has concert venues, world-leading galleries, museums, heritage institutions, and a lively cultural scene, including the Edinburgh International Festival. The Reid School of Music contributes significantly to this environment with regular concerts and music festivals, by hosting panel discussions and a wide range of other public events. We have a world-leading collection of musical instruments at St Cecilia's Hall, Scotland's oldest concert venue, and are connected with cutting edge artistic practices and debates through the University's contemporary art gallery, Talbot Rice. The Edinburgh Futures Institute is a growing platform focused on exploring futures in teaching and research across the arts, sciences, politics and the economy.  

The National Library of Scotland is one of five legal deposit libraries within the United Kingdom.  Edinburgh is a UNESCO world heritage city, and in 2019 was listed as the ‘greenest’ city in the UK, with over 49% of the city classified as ‘green space’. 

Enquiries to Head of Music, Dr Martin Parker martin.parker@ed.ac.uk. 

Your skills and attributes for success: 

• International research profile 
• Innovative and inclusive approach to music pedagogy 
• Success winning research grants 
• Commitment to collegial working practices 
• Experience of leadership in HE 

Should you be shortlisted for interview you will be required to provide details of 3 referees.  If any candidate wishes to submit references at the application stage, they can be sent to ECA.HR@ed.ac.uk 

Interviews will take place on 12 May 2023. If invited for interview you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK

Presentations and 2-2-1 meeting with the Head of College and Head of School will take place on 11 or 12 May 2023, exact date will be confirmed in due course.

Click to view a copy of the full job description and selection criteria.

As a valued member of our team you can expect: 

An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work. We give you support, nurture your talent and reward success. You will benefit from a competitive reward package and a wide range of staff benefits, which includes a generous holiday entitlement, a defined benefits pension scheme, staff discounts, family friendly initiatives, flexible working and much more. Access our staff benefits page for further information and use our reward calculator to find out the total value of pay and benefits provided.

The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality.

If invited for interview you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK.  Further information is available on our right to work webpages.

The University is able to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role.  If successful, an international applicant requiring sponsorship to work in the UK will need to satisfy the UK Home Office’s English Language requirements and apply for and secure a Skilled Worker Visa.  

About Us

As a world-leading research-intensive University, we are here to address tomorrow’s greatest challenges. Between now and 2030 we will do that with a values-led approach to teaching, research and innovation, and through the strength of our relationships, both locally and globally.

About the Team

Staff within the Reid School of Music are recognised internationally for their work in a broad range of creative and scientific areas of music including composition, sociology of music, popular music, psychology of music, music and the moving image, music neuroscience, music informatics, community and therapeutic music making, musical acoustics and musical instrument research, as well as for scholarly work on renaissance vocal music, film music, twentieth century music and contemporary music. Recent graduates have included leading figures in the areas of composition, conducting, sound recording and music production, indie music, community music, advertising, and commercial applications of new technologies, as well as in teaching, research, and academic and scholarly work.

The Reid School of Music at Edinburgh University, formerly the Faculty of Music and now a School within the newly merged Edinburgh College of Art, was one of the very earliest to be established in the UK. The Reid Chair of Music was first set up in 1839 and has been held by Friedrich Niecks, Donald Francis Tovey, Kenneth Leighton and Nigel Osborne amongst others. The Faculty of Music was established in 1894 under Niecks, whose programme for the BMus was the first of its kind in the UK, forming the model for all subsequent degree programmes in music.

There are currently three four-year undergraduate honours degrees: the BMus and the BMus in Music Technology. The four-year course allows students to study a broad curriculum (the broadest in the UK) in the first two years, and to specialise in areas of their choice in the final two. Teaching is divided into three areas: compositional subjects, cultural and musicological subjects, and performance-related subjects. There is also a broad range of taught master’s degrees and research degrees, including PhD in Composition and PhD in Creative Practice.

Find out more at https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/reid-school-music