Ben Macpherson

I am currently Reader in Vocal Theatres at the School of Film, Media and Creative Technologies at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Previously, I held academic roles at the University of Winchester, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and several UK further education colleges. From 2014 to 2023, I led the BA (Hons) Musical Theatre course at Portsmouth. My research focuses on the intersection of interdisciplinary voice studies and musical theatre, with particular interests in vocal aesthetics, cultural identity in British musicals, alternative vocal and music theatre practices (e.g., composed theatre, extended voice, actor-musicianship), and innovative approaches to musical theatre dramaturgy.

Between 2022 – 2023 I led the international research network ‘Original Cast Recordings: Musical Theatre and/as Sonic Heritage’, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Council in partnership with the National Science and Media Museum, exploring musical theatre on record as sonic heritage. I also received a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant in 2022 to study musical theatre recordings from 1900 to 1940.
I co-founded the Centre for Interdisciplinary Voice Studies in 2015 (with Konstantinos Thomaidis) and serve as founding co-editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies (Intellect, since 2015) and the Routledge Voice Studies book series in the same year. Our edited collection Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience launched the series. Since 2012, I’ve also been part of the steering group for the British Musical Theatre Research Institute. This led to my first book, Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre, 1890–1939: Knowing One’s Place (Palgrave, 2018). My second book, Singing Utopia: Voice in Musical Theatre (Oxford University Press) was published in 2024.

I also work as a composer-lyricist, and I create music theatre that explores unconventional narratives and dramaturgies. In 2020, I co-created a site-specific musical audio-walk about Virginia Dare – the first child born an English family in America, funded by the Being Human Festival.