Trinity Long Room Hub announces O’Mahony Music Research Fellowship

Posted on: 16 May 2025

At a special event on Wednesday, 14 May, a new research fellowship in music was announced by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.

The three-month funded fellowship, which is generously supported by Rosemary O’Mahony, is dedicated to music and music-related research and will be awarded annually on a competitive basis.

The O’Mahony Visiting Research Fellowship in Music will be open internationally to musicologists, music theorists, textual scholars, music technologists and composers with a strong record of research and/or creative output.

Nicole Grimes, Rosemary O'Mahony and Eve Patten at the O'Mahony Fellowship Launch

Applicants will be invited to propose a project in collaboration with an academic partner from the Department of Music and/or other Trinity Arts and Humanities departments.

Music has played a prominent role in the life of Trinity College Dublin since its foundation in 1592. The establishment of a Professorship in Music in 1764 was one of the earliest such appointments in the world.

Today, the Department of Music is a dynamic hub of creative and scholarly activity. It is particularly noted for its strengths in composition and choral studies, the study of English Renaissance music, 19th-century music and aesthetics, women composers, explorations of music technology, and the intersection of music with other art forms such as film and sustainability-focussed research.

The Trinity Long Room Hub has been welcoming Visiting Research Fellows for over a decade. The institute has also hosted a number of artists in residence, including the musician and composer Michael Gallen who was recently awarded the prestigious 2025 Fedora Prize.

Members of the Mornington Singers Choir performing at the launch. 

Applicants are invited to respond to Trinity’s Arts and Humanities research themes including human centred approaches to technology; democracy; and identities in transformation; or emerging interdisciplinary fields supported by the Hub which include neuro-humanities, or environmental humanities.

The Visiting Research Fellow in Music may also seek to be inspired by Trinity Library Music Collections for their research, composition or performance. Many of the outstanding Music Collections held in Trinity remain underexplored and await scholarly and performative attention.

Rosemary O’Mahony commented on her support for the new fellowship:

"I have had the privilege of seeing some of the research projects being conducted by the Long Room Hub.  This experience combined with my desire to broaden my knowledge and understanding of music were some of the many reasons, why I was so enthusiastic about supporting this interdisciplinary Research Fellowship in Music."

Professor Eve Patten, director of the Trinity Long Room Hub noted:

“The Trinity Long Room Hub has always been proud to showcase the excellence of Trinity’s Arts and Humanities on a world stage.  Our fellowship programme is one of the ways we do this most successfully, and to have this opportunity to attract world-class talent to work in collaboration with our own researchers in Trinity’s music department will be immensely beneficial.

In her gift to fund this fellowship, Rosemary O’Mahony has recognised the enduring power of the creative arts to provide new understandings of the world around us, and we are deeply appreciative of her support.”   

Dr. Nicole Grimes, Associate Professor of Music at Trinity’s School of Creative Arts, said:

"We are immensely grateful to Rosemary O’Mahony—not only for her generosity, but for her vision. This Fellowship is nothing short of transformative for music at Trinity. It represents a renewed commitment to excellence, to internationalism, and to the idea that research, musical practice, and creativity flourish when they are nurtured together. It makes space for music to speak with other disciplines, to reach new audiences, and to grow in conversation with the world around us.

In a moment when the value of the arts is too often questioned, Rosemary O’Mahony has made a powerful statement: that music matters, that scholarship matters, and that together, they have the power to shape culture and society for the greater good."

For more details on how to apply, see here.  

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