BMus with Honours, MSt: Musicology (Master’s in Studies)(she/her)
Mariana Da Silva Gabriel (She/Her) is a
musicology PhD student at the University of California, Davis.
Originally from Portugal, Mariana moved to the United Kingdom at
the age of six. She received her bachelor’s degree from Cardiff
University and her master’s from the University of Oxford. Her
research interests are in the interplay between music and
politics under authoritarian regimes, and music-making as a
societal response to those regimes.
Virginia Jansen is a PhD student
in Historical Musicology at the University
of California, Davis. She graduated from Boston University
with a Bachelor of Arts in Music concentrating in Historical
Musicology, with a minor in African American Studies, in 2024.
While there, she completed a research project on the influence of
enslaved African Spirituals on Florence Price’s chamber
music and earned the Alice M. Brennan Humanities Award and the
Provost Scholars award.
Anushka Kulkarni is a Ph.D. candidate in
musicology at the University of California, Davis. Her research
examines British-Indian colonial encounter as mediated through
the musical-dramatic stage and explores topics spanning from
eighteenth-century opera seria to Bengali gitinatya. Anushka has
presented her research at various conferences, including the
American Musicological Society, the North American British Music
Studies Association, and the American Handel Society.
Sarah Miller is a Ph.D. Candidate at the
University of California, Davis. She holds an M.A. in Musicology
and an M.M. in Vocal Performance from Butler University in
Indianapolis, Indiana. Her research interests in
eighteenth-century opera buffa, commedia
dell’arte, and Disability Studies culminated in her
dissertation “Disability in Flux: Performing Disability in Carlo
Goldoni’s Comic Operas,” which investigates the imprint of
commedia dell’arte that remains in Carlo Goldoni’s
libretti.
Tracy Monaghan (she/her) is a PhD student in
musicology whose work focuses on issues of race, gender, and
musical appropriation in 20th- and 21st-century opera. She is a
soprano and an avid performer of new music, favoring extended
vocal techniques. Tracy also works to dismantle food insecurity
in her communities. She is currently based in the Bay Area of
California.
Emilia Claire Pierce (She/Her) is a Musicology PhD student at the
University of California, Davis. She holds a Master of Music in
Composition and a Master of Arts in Musicology from the
University of Nevada, Reno.
Her research explores the intersections of gender and sexuality
in performance, as well as the cultural and social meanings
embedded in Italian popular music. Building on both her scholarly
and creative practice, Emilia examines how music reflects and
shapes discourses of identity, intimacy, and power in
contemporary contexts.
