Dr Kirsty Devaney

Lecturer in Music Education

Dr Kirsty Devaney is a lecturer in music education. As a composer and music education researcher, her practice centres on breaking down myths and barriers to composing; empowering people to redefine what composing is, who composers are, and how they create new music. She has been active in creating pathways for young composers for over 10 years, including founding and running the Young Composers Project at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire since 2013.

Upon graduating and receiving the Principal’s Award from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, she completed her doctorate in 2018 with Martin Fautley and Janet Hoskyns at Birmingham City University, exploring composing in upper secondary school examinations. Results from her doctorate were reported by national newspapers and she won the prestigious Anna Craft Award for Creativities in Education from the British Educational Research Association (BERA). In 2019 she was awarded an honorary membership of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and recently she co-edited the Routledge Companion to Teaching Music Composition in Schools (2024).

In more recent years, her research has focused on inequality within music education, being invited to take part in several working groups including Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies (EDIMS), and the Alternative Conservatoire advisory board. In 2021 she was supported by the Society of Research into Higher Education (SRHE) to investigate how socio-economic background influences undergraduate music students’ experiences and career aspirations within UK conservatoires, and she has been invited to present these findings at the Conservatoires UK conference in 2024.

As a composer, Kirsty specialises in composing music with and for young and non-professional musicians. Her music has been shortlisted for a British Composer Award and aired on BBC Radio 3.

She welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students working in the areas of: composing and creativity in music education; equality, diversity, inclusion and access to music education; and collaborative/community-led composing practices.

Selected publications

Devaney K (forthcoming), Pedagogies in composing, in C Philpott & G Spruce (eds.), Debates in Music Teaching (2nd edition), Routledge.

Devaney K, Fautley M, Grow J, & Ziegenmeyer A (eds.) (2024), The Routledge Companion to Teaching Music Composition in Schools: International Perspectives, Routledge [DOI].

Devaney K (2024), “How much are you willing to give up?” Investigating how socio-economic background influences undergraduate music students’ experiences and career aspirations within UK conservatoires, Research Report, Society for Research into Higher Education [LINK].

Partti H & Devaney K (2023), Addressing gender inequality in and through music composing studies, Nordic Research in Music Education, 4, 48–66 [DOI].

Devaney K (2023), Investigating how composing teaching and assessment in English secondary school classrooms reinforce myths about composers and their creative practices, British Journal of Music Education, 40 (1), 3-19. [DOI].

Devaney K & Hughes N (2023), Bridging the gap: gender equality in music technology, Music Teacher Magazine [LINK].

Devaney K (2022), Heads of composition perspectives on the role of composition teaching in UK music conservatoires composition department, Music Education Research, 24 (5), 611-624 [DOI].

Faculties / departments: Research, Academic staff