Rate My Professor Kerry Murphy

Professor Kerry Murphy, Honorary Professor Emeritus at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, previously served as Professor of Musicology and Head of Musicology until 2019. She earned her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, including a PhD in 1984, from the University of Melbourne. Her doctoral research examined the formation of the music criticism of Hector Berlioz, and she studied in Paris from 1980 to 1982, participating in musicology seminars at the École des hautes études. Prior to her ongoing appointment at Melbourne since 1993, Murphy held positions as assistant archivist at the Grainger Museum and lecturer at the Australian Catholic University and Canberra School of Music. In 1990, she received a Melbourne University Research Fellowship for Women with Career Interruptions, shared with a lectureship.

Murphy's research focuses on 19th-century French music and music criticism, colonial Australian music history, reception studies, and opera. Key publications include her book Hector Berlioz and the Development of French Music Criticism (1988), co-edited Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies (2007), and Pursuit of the New: Louise Hanson-Dyer (2024, with Jennifer Hill). With over 149 citations on Google Scholar, her scholarship has influenced the field through supervision of fourteen PhDs—four resulting in books—substantial grants, conference convenings such as the 2001 Musicological Society of Australia national conference and a 2004 international symposium on 19th-century French music, and roles including founding member of the UK AHRC Francophone Music Criticism Network (1789–1914), Honorary Associate of CHOMBEC, and artistic advisory board member for Victorian Opera Company. Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA) in 2008, she continues to contribute through public lectures and editorial work.