Marianne Gillion

I am a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow, funded by the European Commission, with my project Resounding Worship: Networks of Musical Devotion in the European Reformations, 1520-1648. I previously held postdoctoral positions at the University of Salzburg and most recently at KU Leuven. My research interests include book history, Reformation and Counter-Reformation liturgies, and the musical and devotional lives of beguines.

I studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and at Trinity Western University, where I was awarded a Bachelor of Arts. I received a Master of Arts in Music from Bangor University (conferred 2012), and completed a PhD in Music at the University of Manchester in 2015 with the thesis ‘“Diligentissime emendatum, atque correctum”? The transmission and revision of plainchant in Italian printed graduals, 1499–1653’. For my first postdoctoral role, I was a research assistant on the project Music Printing in German-Speaking Lands: From the 1470s to the mid-16th Century at the University of Salzburg (2016–2017). In 2017 I joined KU Leuven and the Alamire Foundation as a postdoctoral researcher, and in 2018 was awarded a three-year individual mandate by the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research for my project According to Antwerp, Reformed to Rome: Music, Liturgies, and Identities in the Bishopric of Antwerp (1559–1801). My project, Resounding Worship: Networks of Musical Devotion in the European Reformations, 1520-1648 received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Seal of Excellence Fellowship from Vinnova and the Swedish Strategy Group for EU-Coordination in 2021 (project 2021-01837), and a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Action from the European Commission, which began in April 2022.

In my research, I explore how the plainchant used in public worship could challenge, shape, and express identities, especially in times of religious upheaval. Combining methods from musicology and book history, I investigate how chant could serve as a form of connection, uniting diverse communities across political, religious, and chronological boundaries. My approach includes practice-based research, through which I have examined the roles of chant, extemporised polyphony, and organ in musical liturgies. Gender is a central focus of my research. In my current Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action, I investigate how re-presentations of femininities in revised saints’ celebrations influenced communities’ gendered ideas and expectations. I am also interested in the musical and devotional activities of semi-religious women, particularly beguines.

A strong focus on and involvement with the multidisciplinary digital humanities is key to my work. I am an official collaborator of the Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission project, funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. I also act as a musicological consultant for the project Unlocking the Mysteries of a Medieval Chant Book with Multispectral Imaging, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA) and based at the University of Missouri – Kansas City.