Top companies your searchers work at

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Clip of the LinkedIn section listing the top companies my searches work at

Linked in won’t tell me much, without my paying for Premium membership, which I’m not going to do. Still they’ll tell me the top three companies my searchers work at. Frankly, I’m surprised by their names. I’m particularly surprised that IQVIA (a real company) has looked me up again, considering I have spoken to a real, live person – well, I assume she was real and live – to point out that I am absolutely not who they are looking for. So, why have they looked me up again? Didn’t they remove me from their list of hopefuls, as I rather strongly suggested?

This is Who I am Not

I am not, never have been, never will be a medic of any description. Do they really think that just because I have a PhD and am a post doctoral research fellow, I must therefore be a medical researcher?

I was not a straight-A-in-every-subject all-rounder: I have one narrowly-passed O-Level in Physical Chemistry. That’s is my sole scientific credential. The other ten O-Levels, and all subsequent qualifications, are non-scientific.

This is Who I am

I work in a Conservatoire! (To anyone in the USA, it would be called a conservatory.) I’m a musicologist, and my historical research crosses over into social history.

Anyway, to make things easier for them, I have improved my profile. Before tonight, perhaps it was a little ambiguous – to headhunters not familiar with what a Conservatoire is all about:-

Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Athenaeum Award for Leng Medal Memories research project.

And now?

This is What I do

Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Athenaeum Award for Leng Medal Memories research project into a Dundee Scots Song Competition 🎵.

  • I haven’t said I’m ‘Open to’ work of any kind, because I’m semi-retired, live in Glasgow with an elderly spouse, and could only possibly entertain part-time research which did not entail relocation.
  • I don’t wish to Enhance my profile using AI.
  • I shall, however, Add a section to help clarify that medical research is really, truly not my forte! I’ve linked to my publications list, and featured the paper I’m giving at the Royal Academy of Music’s September conference, Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914:- ‘The Trumpet Major’s ‘Poetess’ Widow; the Scottish Shipping Magnate’s Daughter and the Retired Barrister: The Importance of Parental Support to Musically Gifted Girls in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Eras’.

Having written my conference paper and devised a PowerPoint, it’ll be back to transcribing oral history interviews on Thursday. The kind of thing you’d expect a musicologist/social historian to be doing, in fact!

And it Goes on

A week later – now we have pharmaceutical companies and animal health experts looking me up. What do I have to do …. ?!

Now in Paperback! A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music, 1880-1951

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
A copy of A Social History of Amateur Music- Making and National Identity, on a piano music stand.

Forgive me for boasting, but this is exciting! I’ve just discovered that my second monograph came out in paperback on 21 May 2026, just over 18 months after the hardback and digital versions. This is really good news, because it makes it much, much more affordable for individual scholars.

Book Description

Late Victorian Scotland had a flourishing music publishing trade, evidenced by the survival of a plethora of vocal scores and dance tune books; and whether informing us what people actually sang and played at home, danced to, or enjoyed in choirs, or reminding us of the impact of emigration from Britain for both emigrants and their families left behind, examining this neglected repertoire provides an insight into Scottish musical culture and is a valuable addition to the broader social history of Scotland.

The decline of the music trade by the mid-twentieth century is attributable to various factors, some external, but others due to the conservative and perhaps somewhat parochial nature of the publishers’ output. What survives bears witness to the importance of domestic and amateur music-making in ordinary lives between 1880 and 1950. Much of the music is now little more than a historical artefact. Nonetheless, Karen E. McAulay shows that the nature of the music, the song and fiddle tune books’ contents, the paratext around the collections, its packaging, marketing and dissemination all document the social history of an era whose everyday music has often been dismissed as not significant or, indeed, properly ‘old’ enough to merit consideration.

The book will be valuable for academics as well as folk musicians and those interested in the social and musical history of Scotland and the British Isles.

ISBN

Paperback 9781032389219

Hardback 9781032389202

eBook 9781003347460

Headline News! Book Progress

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music, 1880-1951

I’ve just heard I should get the proofs of my second monograph by the end of July.

It looks as though the start of semi-retirement is going to be action-packed, doesn’t it? You might almost think I’d planned it that way, but in truth, it’s just how things have worked out.  Any planning was really no more than my thinking, ‘yes, that will probably work out rather nicely’.

I need to start thinking about indexing.  Indeed, I have made a partial start, but so far only focusing on one aspect.

Let me just stop coughing and get this beastly flu-bug out of the way, and then I’ll roll my sleeves up!

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

My Second Monograph: Update

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

No, it’s not published yet. But … there are exciting signs of progress towards that goal.

A Social History of Amateur Music-Making

Meanwhile ….

Amazon has found something I might like. And indeed, I do. I wrote it!

‘We found something you might like’

Typewriter image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay

Am Writing: New Book Contract

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Yes, folks, there really is going to be another book. Following on from my first one, date-wise, but with more social history, more about publishers, and more about amateur music making between 1880-1950.

Exciting? You bet!

Provisional Title

A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music, 1880-1950