Kate Kennedy (writer)
Kate Kennedy is a British biographer, academic and BBC broadcaster, who specialises in literature and music of the twentieth century. She is the Director of Oxford University's Centre for Life-Writing and Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. She is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Women Composers, Director of the Museum of Music History and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Early life and education
Born in Bristol, Kennedy attended the specialist music school, Wells Cathedral School, where she studied as a cellist. In 1996 she commenced studying Music and then English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Despite a severe arm injury which affected her career as a cellist, in 2000 she was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Music where she studied for a postgraduate diploma in advanced performance. She then completed a master's degree in twentieth-century literature at King's College London, and freelanced as a baroque cellist in London, helping to found the orchestra Southbank Sinfonia with its founder-conductor Simon Over, before returning to Cambridge in 2005 where she completed a PhD at Clare Hall on the World War I poet and composer Ivor Gurney.Career
Kennedy has lectured in Music and English at Girton College, Cambridge, where she received a Katharine Jex-Blake Research Fellowship as well as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. In 2016, she became a member of the English Faculty at Oxford University, where she is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing and Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College.Her 2024 book, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound, tells the story of cellists Amedeo Baldovino, Pál Hermann, Lise Cristiani, and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, and their cellos. It was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society's Storytelling Award 2025. The award recognises work that newly or distinctly furthered the understanding of classical music in the UK.
Selected bibliography
Ivor Gurney: Poet, Composer The First World War: Literature, Music, Memory The Silent Morning: Culture, Memory and the Armistice 1918, co-editor with Trudi TateLiterary Britten The Fateful Voyage, starring Alex JenningsLives of Houses Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney*