Marianne Gillion

Jag är forskare på Marie Skłodowska-Curie projektet Resounding Worship: Networks of Musical Devotion in the European Reformations, 1520-1648. Tidigare arbetade jag som postdoktor på KU Leuven (Belgien) och Salzburgs Universitet (Österrike). Mina forskningsintressen är tidigmodern bokhistoria, reformationens och motreformationens gudstjänster, och musikens betydelse för kvinnor i öppnare ordenslika systerskap, så kallade ‘beguiner’.

Jag studerade på the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Trinity Western University (BA 2010) och Bangor University (MA, 2012). Jag disputerade vid The University of Manchester 2015 på avhandlingen “Diligentissime emendatum, atque correctum”? The transmission and revision of plainchant in Italian printed graduals, 1499–1653. Min första postdoc var kopplad till projektet Music Printing in German-Speaking Lands: From the 1470s to the mid-16th Century, på Salzburgs Universitet (2016–2017). Under 2017 arbetade jag vid KU Leuven och the Alamire Foundation som postdoktor, och 2018 beviljades jag ett treårigt projekt från Research Foundation – Flanders: According to Antwerp, Reformed to Rome: Music, Liturgies, and Identities in the Bishopric of Antwerp (1559–1801). Mitt projekt, Resounding Worship: Networks of Musical Devotion in the European Reformations, 1520-1648 belönades med en Marie Skłodowska-Curie Seal of Excellence Fellowship från Vinnova i 2021, och en Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action från Europeiska kommissionen, och började i April 2022.

In my research, I explore how the plainchant used in public worship could challenge, shape, and express identities, especially in times of religious upheaval. Combining methods from musicology and book history, I investigate how chant could serve as a form of connection, uniting diverse communities across political, religious, and chronological boundaries. My approach includes practice-based research, through which I have examined the roles of chant, extemporised polyphony, and organ in musical liturgies. Gender is a central focus of my research. In my current Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action, I investigate how re-presentations of femininities in revised saints’ celebrations influenced communities’ gendered ideas and expectations. I am also interested in the musical and devotional activities of semi-religious women, particularly beguines.

A strong focus on and involvement with the multidisciplinary digital humanities is key to my work. I am an official collaborator of the Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission project, funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. I also act as a musicological consultant for the project Unlocking the Mysteries of a Medieval Chant Book with Multispectral Imaging, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA) and based at the University of Missouri – Kansas City.