Departments
Dean's Office
Education
- Cornell University, Ph.D.
- Cornell University, M.A.
- Smith College, B.A.
- Manhattan School of Music and in Vienna
Awards
- National Endowment for the Humanities
- Lilly Teaching Fellowship
- University of Virginia Sesquicentennial Associate for the Centre for Advanced Studies
- Thomas Jefferson Visiting Fellowship at Downing College, Cambridge University
Professional Experience
- Professor of Music, Northeastern University
- Director of New Zealand School of Music
- Professor of Musicology, New Zealand School of Music
- Associate Editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal
Elizabeth joined Northeastern University as Dean of the College of Arts, Media, and Design and Professor of Music in July 2015. A leader and an accomplished scholar, Elizabeth came to Northeastern from the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was a professor of musicology.
Elizabeth was the inaugural director of the New Zealand School of Music from 2006 to 2013, overseeing a number of successful initiatives to advance the school’s academic and research programs and international profile. During her tenure as director, Elizabeth’s accomplishments included overhauling the curriculum to enhance professional training, improving the research-teaching nexus, and increasing cross-disciplinary collaboration. She also facilitated the creation of a joint PhD program between music and Engineering.
Prior to her tenure at the New Zealand School of Music, Elizabeth held both faculty and administrative leadership positions at the University of Virginia, where she served as director of undergraduate programs in the McIntire Department of Music, and director of graduate programs.
Throughout Elizabeth’s academic career, she has received numerous grants and fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lilly Teaching Fellowship, the University of Virginia Sesquicentennial Associate for the Centre for Advanced Studies, and the Thomas Jefferson Visiting Fellowship at Downing College, Cambridge University.
Elizabeth was founding Assistant Editor and later Associate Editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal, and is currently a member of the executive board of the American Institute of Verdi Studies and an editorial board member of Verdi Forum. Her critical edition of Verdi’s Il corsaro (published by The University of Chicago Press) has received performances around the world. She has published in leading academic journals and presses on the operas of Verdi, Donizetti, and Puccini. Her current work blends approaches from the fields of musicology, Italian Risorgimento history, trauma studies and recent work in the neuroscience of music and emotion to propose a new understanding of Verdi’s middle period operas.