Increase in staff submitted

We entered 87% of our eligible academic staff (547 members) into the 2008 RAE, representing a 59% increase over our 2001 submission. This places us ninth in the country in terms of increase in staff submitted - more than four times the average percentage increase across the sector.

The School of Arts achieved a 15-fold increase in the number of staff submitted compared with RAE2001, with a significant increase in those rated as world-class.

The Centre for Contemporary Music Practice in the School of Arts is home to one of the most significant concentrations of specialist composers in a UK university. Indeed Centre Director, Professor Peter Wiegold (pictured), believes it to be the “leading centre for contemporary music in Europe”.

The Centre has as one of its chief aims the recording and analysis of creative work so that it is underpinned by an understanding of the aesthetic, technical and psychological issues involved. It also aims to continue to attract the most promising composers, theorists and performers, particularly those who have radical and innovative approaches to contemporary music-making. The Centre’s current research activity reflects the success of this approach:

• Instrumental composition for the concert hall;
• Composition in mixed-media contexts involving, for example, live electronics and/or video;
• Electro-acoustic music in recorded format;
• The relationship between composition and both improvisation and performance;
• Conducting and performance;
• Music and phonetics;
• Sound design for installation and choreography;
• 20th century musicology;
• Aesthetics and sociology of music. 

Professor Christopher Fox joined Brunel as research professor in music in April 2006. His work has been performed and broadcast worldwide and has featured in many of the leading new music festivals, from the Amsterdam Proms to the BBC Promenade Concertsand from St Petersburg to Sydney. His primary interest is in new music, in particular experimental, minimalist and complex tendencies in American and European music.

Professor Richard Barrett joined Brunel in May 2006, having spent much of the previous six years teaching and performing in The Hague and Berlin. His compositions have won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (1986), Gaudeamusprijs (1989) and the British Composer Award for chamber music (2003).