Adam Behan

I am a musicologist. I work for the most part on western music in the twentieth century, and I'm broadly interested in recordings and cultural history. Much of my research to date has explored ways of studying individual performers by merging critical and empirical approaches. I'm currently writing a book about Irish popular music at the end of the twentieth century, one that brings together musicology, Irish social history and gender studies.

I hold degrees from Trinity College Dublin and the University of Cambridge, where my graduate studies were funded by a Peterhouse Graduate Studentship. I took up a one-year lecturing post in Maynooth University in 2022 and began a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship in October 2023. 

My research has won awards including the Karl Geiringer Scholarship from the American Brahms Society and the Westrup Prize from the Music & Letters Trust. I have published articles in Music Analysis, Twentieth-Century Music, Quodlibet, Music & Letters, and The Journal of the Society for American Music. I have presented papers at multiple international conferences, and have received invitations to deliver research seminars and for other speaking engagements at various institutions, including the Eastman School of Music, Dublin City University, the University of Aberdeen and Maynooth University. I'm also a member of the SMI Council (2024–27).

All of my publications are open access and can be downloaded from my Academia page.