Research Events & Seminars
At Trinity Laban we host a wide range of research events throughout the year, from seminars and symposia to conferences, performances, concerts and professional development.
Our events offer opportunities for staff and students to learn and develop, share best practice and findings and get support.
Our public research events allow our research community to share their knowledge and expertise and engage with a wider audience in London and around the world.
Public research events
Women's Work in Music Conference 2025
The Fifth International Conference on Women’s Work in Music was held at the Old Royal Naval College, 29 – 31 August 2025.
Parallax: Showcase Series
Parallax is our showcase event series for our research staff and Creative Practice research students. From mixed media installations and presentations, to live performances that manifest artistic practice, these events explore and showcase the latest research themes at Trinity Laban.
Trinity Laban student
and staff research events
Professional development
We offer our research students and staff an extensive programme of professional development events throughout the year. Events take place between January and June and are announced in the autumn term.
Research Groups
SMMS Research Forum: The SM|MS Research Forum meets termly on Wednesdays at 4pm online, led by Professor Sam Hayden. The forum was set-up to enable and encourage cross-disciplinary contact and collaboration within Trinity Laban at a research level. It is primarily intended to be an informal and open context for the sharing of work, whether practice-based, text-based, visual arts or any other media. Cross-disciplinary projects that specifically engage with interfaces between Music and Dance (or Sound and Movement more broadly understood) are of particular interest. If you would like to present at the forum, please contact Professor Sam Hayden.
Jazz Research Group: The Jazz Research Group meets fortnightly, led by Dr Tomas Challenger. Lift The Bandstand, Trinity Laban’s Inaugural Jazz and Improvisation Research Symposium takes place on Thu 23 Oct 2025 at the Laban Building with a busy day of performance, seminars and discussion.
Dance and Performance Studies Reading Group: This group meets twice per term on Wednesdays in the Laban Building at 5.15pm, led by Dr Rebecca Stancliffe, please contact her for more information about the sessions.
Sounding Moves | Moving Sound (SMMS)
Monday 8 December 2025,10:00-17:00, Laban Building
The third Sounding Moves | Moving Sound will continue to explore the relationship between music and dance at Trinity Laban. In previous years we’ve had presentations on jazz as dancing, dancers using technology to manipulate sound, how artforms combine in musical theatre, musicians working with circus performers, how musicians and dancers understand rhythm, community projects, games as performance, sound and movement in education, performances and installations.
Find out more about last year’s event here.
For more information, contact: SoundingMoves@edutrinitylabanac.onmicrosoft.com
RDP Presentation Week
We offer a week of online and in-person events for our research students during which they share their project progress with their colleagues in a supportive environment.
Our 2025 RDP presentations took place on 12-13 March and included the following topics:
- Teal Darkenwald: Mapping Sound to Movement to Create a Novel Retraining Method for Dancers
- Jui-Ying Huang: The Next Step: Intersection and Reimagination of Marching and Minimalism Music
- Morad Kashef: Integrating Azerbaijani Mugham techniques with 20th-century European orchestral traditions, particularly aleatoric and chance music
- Felice Pomeranz: Findings from interviews, surveys, and a musical vignette, developed from the research topic ‘The Patriarchy of Jazz: The Emergence of Women and Unusual Instruments in a Male-Dominated Art Form’
- Davood Jafari: Polyphonic composition based on Persian music
- Charlotte Eaton: Embodying tactile-kinaesthetic imagery: reimagining bodily/fleshly experience through Somatic Improvisation & expanding its contributions to dance practice, process and product
- Byron Wallen: The Confluence of Melody, Rhythm and Harmony: Investigating Circular and Linear concepts within large scale composition
- Maya Rosenwasser: Reflections on the research topic: Queer(ing) Sounds: An exploration of London’s LGBTQIA+ community through electroacoustic music practices
- Ying Chen: The changing styles in Robert Schumann’s piano music, according to his different compositional periods
- Xinyu Liu: Exploring Strategies for Integrating Classical and Contemporary Elements into Participatory Music Performances
- Filippo Ieraci: Polyphonic and Contrapuntal Techniques in M. Giuliani and M. Carcassi: Composing Two Guitar Etudes
- Gloria Yehilevsky: un/intentional improvisational-compositional realisations exploring cognitive sources
- Graham Devine: Reflections on the research topic: J S Bach complete lute works: performance guide to new transcriptions and complete work recordings for the ten-string guitar
Research Seminars
The Research Seminar Series 2025-26 is busy programme of presentations by the Trinity Laban research community presenting current research to staff and students across the institution.
When: Wednesdays 17:15-18:15
Date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Venue: Laban Lecture Theatre
Dr David Leahy: Underscoring a personal and group practice for improvising musicians and dancers
The Underscore was devised as a group-based dance practice by Contact Improviser, Nancy Stark Smith. Providing both a clear framework to follow and a rich vocabulary, the Underscore is used by many as a personal research tool to support the development of the dancer’s practice. As part of my MA at Laban in 2014, I translated the practice to make it applicable to an improvising musician’s practice. I have since continued to use both of these practices as integral parts of my research and performative practice.
This seminar will report on an ongoing practice that I have been running at Laban since October 2024, which draws heavily on the Underscore and Music-based Underscore practices. These open, fortnightly practices have been attended by an ever-growing number of colleagues and also collaborators from outside the institution. This presentation will delve into the structure of the shared practice and how it has been supporting our performative practice. It will also touch on how the process gives space for connections to naturally emerge between the two sets of participants. I will be joined by some of the participants from both within and from outside the institution to share their experiences and the presentation will be accompanied by a selection of images captured during the practices.
Date: Wed 12 Nov 2025
Venue: Mackerras Room
Dr Bruno Heinen: Folk Melodies through Polytonality and Rhythmic Counterpoint
Date: Wed 26 Nov 2025
Venue: Laban Studio 8
Professor Dominic Murcott: Tales of Cumbia
An album that has taken three years from instigation to completion featuring angular contemporary classical music, heroic jazz musicians and dance music from Colombia!
Date: Wed 3 Dec 2025
Venue: Peacock Room, King Charles Court
Dr Leo Geyer: Restoring the Lost Music of Auschwitz
Date: Wed 28 Jan 2026
Venue: Laban Lecture Theatre
Catherine Haber: Measuring Dance Performance: Methodological approaches to enhance validity in dance biomechanics
Date: Wed 4 Feb 2026
Venue: Theatre Studio, King Charles Court
Alex Paxton: Approaches to solo and jazz improvisation within composed large ensemble notated music. Orchestras, children, electronics and strawberries
Date: Wed 4 Mar 2026
Venue: Laban Lecture Theatre
Dr Christina Guillaumier & Dr Antonina Puchkovskaia (KCL): Women’s Creative Leadership and the case of Marion Scott
Date: Wed 6 May 2026
Venue: Laban Lecture Theatre
Heidi Rustgaard: Title to be announced
Date: Wed 20 May 2026
Venue: Laban Lecture Theatre
Dr Tom Challenger: Vee Music/Fluid Orchestration + Collaboration (working title)
Previous events
Discover the range of research events and seminars held at Trinity Laban by exploring our events archive.
Contact us
Please contact our Research Administrator Sara Pay to find out more about upcoming events.