Professor Katharine Ellis has been elected to honorary membership of the American Musicological Society (AMS). 

This is a rare distinction reserved for those who have made outstanding contributions to the field. 

Katharine became a Fellow of Selwyn in 2017. She is a leading scholar of French musical culture. Her research spans the long nineteenth century and beyond, from medieval chant to Les Six, and includes work on music journalism, musical women, music education, and music in literature.

In 2023, she won the Society's senior book prize, the Kinkeldey Award, for French Musical Life: Local Dynamics in the Century to World War II (Oxford University Press, 2022). The book explores French musical centralisation and regionalism across a politically turbulent century. It redraws the historical map of musical power relations in France. Katharine has published three more books on music in France, three edited collections, and numerous articles. She is currently on a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2024-27) to research cultures of Catholic church music across France in the nineteenth century.