Catherine Haworth

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Last updated 27th March 2023

Catherine Haworth joined the Huddersfield staff in 2011 and is currently Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for Music and Music Technology. She gained a first class BA (Hons) Music and an MA in Film Music Studies from the University of Leeds, before being awarded a PhD in film musicology in 2011. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Dames, darlings, and detectives: women, agency, and the soundtrack in RKO Radio Pictures crime films’, explored sonic constructions of femininity in classical Hollywood crime pictures and films noirs.

Catherine’s interdisciplinary research focuses around two main themes: music and sound in audiovisual media, and issues of representation and identity in music and musical culture. She is on the Editorial Board of Music, Sound and the Moving Image, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Catherine sings with the Clothworkers Consort of Leeds, Borealis, and Leeds Baroque Choir.

Catherine's research and teaching reflect the interdisciplinary nature of her interests, which focus around musical issues of representation and identity across various media. Her primary research area is film and television music, with specialisms in classical Hollywood cinema of the 1930s and 40s, crime films, the James Bond series, the economics and aesthetics of popular scoring, and the role of musical performance within film. Catherine is also interested in contemporary critical approaches to aesthetics and musicology across a range of styles and eras, with a particular focus on popular music cultures, including Motown, Northern soul, and disco.    

Catherine has published on topics including scoring the female detective in 1940s Hollywood; music, gender, and medical discourse in the female gothic film; women and music in James Bond films; stardom in the film musical; and issues of representation and identity across the classical and contemporary soundtrack. She guest edited a special edition of Music, Sound and the Moving Image on the theme of gender and sexuality, and co-edited the Ashgate collection Gender, Age and Musical Creativity. Catherine is also in the initial stages of research into musical constructions of girlhood and national identity in British girls' school stories; ‘Latin’ music in classical Hollywood; and various projects on stardom, music, and voice in film and television. Her work has been supported by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.

Catherine has supervised PhD and MA by Research projects across a range of screen musicology, music and identity, and popular music topics, and is happy to hear from prospective students in any of these areas.