Alice Little

About Alice

Alice Little

Alice is a multidisciplinary researcher, with particular expertise in music history and the history of collecting from around 1700 to the present day. She is a Research Fellow in Music, and regularly publishes and presents papers on a range of topics related to her research.

Her research has been supported by a range of awards, fellowships and grants:

  • Patricia Baines Trust, 2018 and 2020, for the Anthony Baines Project
  • TORCH Humanities Knowledge Exchange Fellowships, 2019–20 and 2020–21
  • Junior Research Fellowship, 2018–22, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
  • Humanities Cultural Programme, 2023, for public engagement relating to the Dancing Master exhibition at the Bodleian’s Weston Library
  • Returning Carers’ Fund, 2023–24, for CPD including database design
  • Doctoral study awards: Hélène La Rue Scholarship in Music 2015–18; plus various grants and bursaries, including from the Folklore Society, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Music Research

Alice is a Research Fellow at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments at Oxford University, where she is responsible for the archive of twentieth-century collector and the Bate’s first curator, Anthony Baines. In 2021 she wrote a biographical catalogue of the archive; a second book, focusing on Anthony Baines as a musical instrument collector, will be published in 2024.

From 2018-2022 Alice was a Junior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, and from 2019-21 she received two Humanities Knowledge Exchange Fellowships to work on projects with EFDSS (the English Folk Dance and Song Society) on the eighteenth-century English tunebooks in their collection at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.

Her doctorate was awarded by the Music Faculty at Oxford University, it focused on the life and collection of J. B. Malchair (1730-1812) who collected ‘national music’ in Oxford from 1760-1795. Her previous degrees are an MSc in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, and a BA in Modern History, both also from the University of Oxford.

Her interests include social and cultural history, the history of collecting, material culture, folk music, the concept of Englishness and other national identities (and their expression in music), and the study of musical instruments - particularly how they have ended up in museum collections. You can read about her current and past research here.

Museums

Alice has worked at several museums and collections, including the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments (Oxford), the Horniman Museum (Forest Hill, London), the British Museum (Bloomsbury, London), and the Royal Military School of Music Museum (Twickenham). Her work has included roles in curation, exhibitions, documentation and research.

While at the Bate Collection she has written a biographical catalogue of the Anthony Baines Archive (Oxford: Bate Collection, 2021), and has a book forthcoming on the history of the Bate Collection. Her research includes several publications focusing on collections and collectors of music and musical instruments from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.

In addition to this work, Alice is a member of the committees of the Galpin Society (for the study of musical instruments) and the Musical Instruments Resource Network. Alice is responsible for organising the Galpin Society’s bi-annual conference, in collaboration with the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels; the conference will take place in Oxford from 27-30 June 2024, and is on the theme of Materiality and the Meaning of Musical Instruments.

Academic Life-Writing & Creative Writing

In addition to her academic music research, Alice is Head of Administration at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at Wolfson College where she is responsible for the Visiting Researchers group and strategic management of the research cluster. In addition to facilitating research in life-writing, she provides tutorials in creative writing for undergraduates at Exeter College and Lady Margaret Hall, and runs public-facing workshops in nature and climate writing as Associate Writer in Residece at Wytham Woods, the research woodland of the University of Oxford.

Overarching themes that link all her work are telling stories through objects, the embodiment of narratives, and the use of storytelling to achieve change.

University Teaching

Alice is an experienced teacher, both within the University and in the community - she has worked with children and adults in various education settings since 1999, including organising and delivering after-school programmes, festivals and speaker events, courses and classes, one-to-one lessons and workshop series.

She runs the Oxford Music MSt elective module Museums and Musical Instruments, tutors long and short courses in creative writing for LMH and Exeter College, and runs a weekly public-facing feedback seminar in life-writing for the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing.