Edward Venn

I am Professor of Music at the University of Leeds, having previously worked at Lancaster University (2001–13). My music research activity incorporates opera studies and the analysis and interpretation of twentieth-century and contemporary music, with a particular interest in the work of British composers. Recent work has focused on the operas of Thomas Adès and Orpheus by Jasdeep Singh Degun/Monteverdi. Other recent publications included studies of the music of Harrison Birtwistle, Simon Holt, David Matthews, Michael Finnissy and Michael Tippett, as well as the documentaries of composers by the director Barrie Gavin.

My second monograph, Thomas Adès: Asyla (Landmarks in Music Since 1950), supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, was published in 2017 by Routledge, who have also recently issued my The Music of Hugh Wood (Ashgate, 2008) in paperback. I am currently completing research as part of an AHRC Leadership Fellowship, The Operas of Thomas Adès, which has included the co-editing of Thomas Adès Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2022), which won the 2022 Society for Music Theory award for Outstanding multi-author publication.

I am also active in pedagogic research. In 2021–23 I was partially seconded to the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence to research student sense of belonging and interactive pedagogies ; in 2025 I began a second fellowship with my colleagues Karen Burland and Carla Douglas to develop a student-facing tool to measure and support sense of belonging. In 2025, I published a co-edited collection with Miyoung Ahn and Tom Lowe, Student Belonging in Higher Education.

I am a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council peer review college, editor of the journal Music Analysis, an advisor and regular contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and between 2021-25 was the chair of the Creative Arts and Media subject cluster for the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH). During the academic year 2022-23 I was the DARE academic-in-residence at Opera North,

In 2022-23 I was a member of the national committee for RAISE (Researching, Advancing, and Inspiring Student Engagement). I chaired the 2023 RAISE annual conference, held at the University of Leeds in September 2023. Since 2023 I have been Director of Pedagogic Research in the Arts (PRIA) in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures. In 2023-25 I was co-chair of the International Society for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) interest group for Arts and Humanities, and since 2025 have co-chaired the ISSOTL Advocacy Committee.

I hold an LRSM in conducting, and have remained an active performer alongside my academic career. I have directed a range of ensembles based in North Yorkshire, Birmingham and the North-West of England, performing repertoire from 1500 to the present day.