With the kind support of the Arts Council of Ireland, Sounding The Feminists (STF) together with the Contemporary Music Centre (CMC) are delighted to welcome Research Associate Ciara Murphy to begin the process of a quantitative analysis of gender balance in publicly-funded financial opportunities for composers across the island of Ireland over the past 30 years.

This project is to carry out an initial review to establish an authoritative list of funding and commissioning organisations that offered specific composer-funded financial opportunities, the status and existence of their records for this time period, and to determine the availability of those records to the project.

Research Associate Ciara L. Murphy is a Teaching Fellow in Drama and Theatre Studies at Mary Immaculate College. She has recently completed her PhD at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance at NUI Galway, Ireland. Ciara’s research is an interrogation of the relationship between contemporary Irish performance and social change on the island of Ireland, focusing on site-responsive and participatory performance practice. This research was supported by the Galway Doctoral Scholarship Scheme. Ciara was a researcher on the collaborative research project for #WakingtheFeminists, ‘Gender Counts: An Analysis of gender in Irish theatre 2006–2015’, that examines how key roles in Irish theatre have been gendered over the last ten years. Ciara has also published on contemporary Irish theatre in the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, New Hibernian Review/Iris Éireannach Nua and in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance (2018).

STF would like to thank the Advisory Board for their work on this project:

• Dr. Bernadine Brady, Lecturer at the School of Political Science & Sociology, NUI, Galway
• Susan Brodigan, Library Coordinator at  The Contemporary Music Centre
• Seámus Crimmins, previously held positions in RTÉ, The Arts Council, and serves various Boards of music organisations in Ireland
• Dr. Brenda Donohue, Director of Gender Counts, National Project Manager of PISA 2021
• Dr. Laura Watson, STF Education Officer, Lecturer in Musicology at Maynooth University 

Other STF Personnel involved in the Project:

Dr. Ann Cleare, STF Director of Operations for the project

Dr. Karen Power, non-voting Chair of Board meetings