Dr Amelie Addison

Lecturer

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

Amélie Addison grew up in Gateshead, benefiting from local Music Service tuition. She studied cello at Royal Conservatoire Scotland (Glasgow) and TrinityLaban Conservatoire (London), specialising in historically-informed performance of eighteenth-century chamber and sacred music. Amélie enjoyed a varied career as an instrumental, theory, musicianship and ensemble tutor, and a freelance performer.

Amélie completed her doctorate (University of Leeds, 2023) on Tyneside-born theatre composer William Shield, reconstructing his itinerant early career from local archives, discussing how his Border heritage influenced his adaptations of 'national airs' in popular songs, and considering how his compositional style contributed to the political, topical and cultural resonance of his theatre works. She has presented aspects of her research on Shield to the North East Forum for Eighteenth Century and Romantic Studies, English Folk Dance and Song Society, Royal Musical Association, International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies and Society for Theatre Research.

Amélie was awarded the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies / Northumbria University Fellowship 2023/24, during which she undertook further research into William Shield’s links with traditional fiddlers and pipers, and the absorption of his compositions into traditional music archives, in Tyneside, Durham and Northumberland. She also held a postdoctoral fellowship from Leeds Arts & Humanities Research Institute, focused on studying the repertoire and lived experiences of touring circus bandsmen in the 1890s.

Amélie was a Be Curious Associate in public engagement at the University of Leeds, presenting family-friendly activities inspired by her research on circus drummer Teddy King as part of the tricentenary celebration of civil engineer John Smeaton at Armley Mills Industrial Museum, and at the University's Be Curious festival.

As Lecturer in Music at Northumbria Amélie teaches Foundation Year modules on Music Theory and The Music Profession, and undergraduate modules in Music History and Music Education, as well as supervising dissertation projects and assessing student performances.

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Amélie's research interests include: the biography, networks and compositions of William Shield and his contemporaries; the lived experience and repertoire of musicians in circus and other popular touring entertainments during the long nineteenth century; historical performance practice, contextual analysis and scholarly editing of baroque and classical string chamber music, theatre, song and dance music; intersections between traditional, popular and composed musics, in professional, sociable and domestic contexts; transmission and translation of music through oral tradition, manuscript and print across geographical and social borders; music as labour, and representation of musicians in culture and politics; music education and pedagogy, including experiential approaches to music theory; theology of music; poetry of place and identity.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Performing with a Monster Menagerie: A Circus Bandsman’s Perspective, Addison, A. 5 Aug 2025, Outside the Theatre, Turnhout, Belgium, Brepols
The piper, the fiddler and the politician’s gardener, Addison, A. 23 Aug 2024, BSECS Postgraduate & Early Career Conference 2024
William Shield: A Lifelong Relationship with ‘National Airs’, Addison, A. 1 Jan 2020, In: Folk Music Journal
William Shield’s A Collection of Favourite Songs (c. 1775), Addison, A. 16 Oct 2020, Music in North-East England, 1500-1800, Martlesham, UK, Boydell & Brewer