Kate Kennedy (writer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bristol, England
- Biographer
- academic
- broadcaster
Dr Kate Kennedy FRHistS | |
|---|---|
 Kennedy in 2019 | |
| Born | 24 September 1977 Bristol, England |
| Occupation |
|
| Education | Wells Cathedral School |
| Alma mater | |
| Website | |
| drkatekennedy | |
Kate Kennedy (born 24 September 1977) is a British biographer, academic and BBC broadcaster, who specialises in literature and music of the twentieth century.[1] She is the Director of Oxford University's Centre for Life-Writing and Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford.[2] She is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Women Composers, Director of the Museum of Music History and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.[3]
Born in Bristol, Kennedy attended the specialist music school, Wells Cathedral School, where she studied as a cellist. In 1996 she commenced studying Music and then English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Despite a severe arm injury which affected her career as a cellist, in 2000 she was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Music where she studied for a postgraduate diploma in advanced performance.[4] She then completed a master's degree in twentieth-century literature at King's College London, and freelanced as a baroque cellist in London, helping to found the orchestra Southbank Sinfonia with its founder-conductor Simon Over,[5] before returning to Cambridge in 2005 where she completed a PhD at Clare Hall on the World War I poet and composer Ivor Gurney.[6]
Career
Kennedy has lectured in Music and English at Girton College, Cambridge, where she received a Katharine Jex-Blake Research Fellowship as well as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.[7][8] In 2016, she became a member of the English Faculty at Oxford University, where she is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (founded by Hermione Lee in 2011) and Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College.[2]
Her 2024 book, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound, tells the story of cellists Amedeo Baldovino (1916–1998), Pál Hermann (1902–1944), Lise Cristiani (1827–1853), and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch (born 1925), and their cellos.[9] It was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society's Storytelling Award 2025.[10] The award recognises work that newly or distinctly furthered the understanding of classical music in the UK.
