Dr Biranda Ford

Biography

Biranda Ford read music at the University of Oxford (BA Hons and M.St) and violin performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (MA). She completed her PhD on ‘What are conservatoires for?’ at the Institute of Education, University of London, in 2011, with the support of a Wingate Foundation grant.  Her research interests include a variety of issues in music education and performance, drawing from social science, performance musicology and theatre studies disciplines on topics such as performer-audience interactions, conceptions of performance across music and drama and teacher-student dynamics in devised projects. She is also a peer-reviewer for journals in her field.

As a professional violinist she has played with small string orchestra and chamber music groups and has undertaken music education work for Royal Ballet, Wigmore Hall and Spitalfields Festival. Biranda has taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama since 2002 at junior, undergraduate and post-graduate levels, in a wide range of subjects both practical and academic, including chamber music coaching, harmony, dissertation supervision and doctoral research.

Using her experiences as a professional musician, teacher and researcher, Biranda enjoys working with students to develop their creative practice through research. She is enthusiastically committed to the development of research in conservatoires, particularly the integration of research and practice at all levels, planning doctoral training and stimulating debate on the ethics, methodologies and nature of artistic practice based research as an expanding field of enquiry.