Research
Rachel's research is eclectic! It often focuses on the cultural history of music in Britain, with particular specialisms in nineteenth-century industrial history and contemporary military history, plus flute research, prison research and a strong interest in historical recordings.
Rachel is currently undertaking parallel research into the RNCM’s recording archive (Share our Sounds Residency: British Library / RNCM / Manchester Archives+), the history of music in English prisons, and the deployment of (British) military music in modern conflict. Rachel’s PhD (completed at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2021) investigated musical life in Manchester in the nineteenth century. It demonstrated how music contributed to the formation of identity, community and new models of citizenship in the word's first industrial city. It is in the process of becoming a book, under contract with Routledge, titled Music and the Creation of Social Identity during the Industrial Revolution: Manchester, 1819-1857. Rachel is also continuing to develop Masters research into nineteenth-century British flute culture - there are three boxes of very old music in her loft, ripe for further exploration!
Rachel is currently lecturing for the Royal Northern College of Music, the University of Sheffield and the Open University.
Projects
RNCM digital archive of student recordings 1968 - 1994 (2024-6)
The History of Music in English Prisons (Music in Prisons, 2023-4)
Music and Peterloo (consultant research - The Anvil - Manchester International Festival 2019)
Music in Manchester during World War One (2016)
Musical Networks in Early Victorian Manchester (PhD diss.)
Nineteenth-Century British Flute Music: A Forgotten Repertoire (MMus diss.)
Awards and Funding
Royal Historical Society Early Career Fellowship Grant (2025)
North American British Music Studies Association Linda Shaver-Gleason Award (2025)
AHRC PhD Studentship, North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership (2014-21)
RNCM PhD Studentship (2012-14)
Contributions to Research Networks / Other Research Projects
Invited participant, AHRC International Research Network, ‘Mapping Music History’
Invited participant, History of the Humanities Research Network (University of Manchester / Amsterdam)
Invited participant, ERC-funded ‘Music in London 1800–1851’ (led by Roger Parker, KCL)
Invited participant, AHRC-funded ‘Making Music in Manchester during WW1’ (led by Barbara Kelly, RNCM)
Member of the Sonic Cultures Research Network (Manchester University / MMU)
Publications
(if you cannot access these through an academic institution, please email me and I will very happily share a copy)
Monograph: Rachel Johnson, Music and the Creation of Social Identity during the Industrial Revolution: Manchester, 1819-1857 (under contract with Routledge for the book series Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, forthcoming 2027)
Book Chapter (invited chapter): ‘From Conflict to Comradeship: British Army Bands and the British Army of the Rhine’, in Music and Conflict: The Politics and Escapism of Wartime Culture (part of the IAGMR/Routledge book series Rethinking Austrian and German Music, under review)
Journal Article (invited contribution to special issue): Rachel Johnson, ‘Music, Propaganda, Recruitment and the Press: Military Bands in Manchester during the First World War’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review (in press)
Journal Article (invited contribution to special issue): Rachel Johnson, ‘Aftershocks of Peterloo: Manchester Mechanics' Institution and Mutual Improvement', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (December 2024), 33–52.
Book Chapter: Rachel Johnson, '"So Wide is the Field": Edward Taylor's Public Music Lectures', in Christopher Dromey, ed. The Routledge Companion to Applied Musicology, Routledge (2023), 130–140.
Journal Article: Rachel Johnson, ‘The Agency of Music in Industrial Society: A Comparative Study of the Royal Manchester Institution, Manchester Athenaeum and Manchester Mechanics’ Institution, 1834–1860’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 27/1 (January 2022), 97– 119
PhD dissertation: Rachel Johnson, "Musical Networks in Early Victorian Manchester", PhD diss., Awarded for a Collaborative Programme of Research at the Royal Northern College of Music by Manchester Metropolitan University, 2020.
Journal Article: Rachel Johnson, ‘Reading Between the Lines: George Smart’s Annotated Programmes for Manchester’s 1836 Grand Musical Festival’, British Library Journal (2018), https://www.bl.uk/eblj/2018articles/article9.html
Journal Review: Rachel Johnson, ‘John Carnelly, George Smart and Nineteenth-Century London Concert Life’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 15/1 (April 2018), 96–99
Selected Research Events
‘Paper - “Achieving influence” through British military music since 1945’, Music in Socio-Cultural Turmoil conference, Belgrade, October 2025
Paper - ‘The Song of Then and Now: Music in English Prisons’, Biennial International Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, July 2025
Paper - ‘From Conflict to Comradeship: British Army Bands and the British Army of the Rhine’, IAGMR Conference 2023 Music and Conflict: The Politics and Escapism of Wartime Culture, 20 May 2023
Invited Paper - ‘Manchester, 1819: Music, Ideology and the Peterloo Massacre’, MMU long nineteenth century seminar, 18 November 2021
Invited Paper - ‘Music in Crisis: British Army Bands and Modern Conflict’, RNCM Research Forum, 17 November 2021
Invited Panellist - ‘Music, Environment and Social Change’, Festival of Social Science, 15 November 2021
Paper - The Hargreaves Choral Society's Programme Notes, Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, Canterbury, 2019
Paper - Reading between the Lines: George Smart's annotated programmes for Manchester's Grand Musical Festival of 1836, NetMatNW Workshop 'Distinctive Networks: Taste in the Archives', RNCM, May 2019
Paper - Music and Identity in early Victorian Manchester, RNCM, May 2019
Invited Paper - Manchester, 1819: Music, Ideology and the Peterloo Massacre, invited paper, British Music and Ideology Symposium, Institute for Musical Research, London, May 2019
Invited Paper - Music Lecturing in early nineteenth-century Manchester, The Making of the Humanities Conference, Oxford, September 2017
Paper - Musical Entrepreneurship in Early-Victorian Manchester, Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, Birmingham, June 2017
Paper - The contested roles of music in the institutions of early-nineteenth-century Manchester, Music & Politics Conference, KCL, May 2017
Paper - Musical Entrepreneurship in Early-Victorian Manchester, Musical Cultures Conference, Hull, April 2017
Paper - Networks of musical sociability: Manchester's Madrigal Society, Gentlemen's Glee Club, and Amateur Glee and Catch Club, RMA Research Student Conference, Canterbury, January 2017
Lecture Series - Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Glossop Guild, November/December 2016
Paper - Miltary Music and Manchester's Great War, RNCM Music in Manchester during WW1 Study Day, Manchester Histories Festival 2016
Paper - Materialities, Music and the 'Manchester Man', Material Cultures/Material Worlds conference, Nineteenth Century Studies Association, Boston, March 2015
Paper - Networks of musical provision in the Institutions of early-Victorian Manchester, RMA and Lucem Study Day on Amateur Music-Making in the British Provinces, University of Leeds, 18 June 2014
Paper - The Hargreaves Choral Society 1841-49, RNCM Research Student Symposium, 14 May 2014
Paper - 'Musical transformations of the public sphere in newly-industrialised Manchester', Joint RMA/BFE Study Day on Music and the Public Sphere, Manchester University, 11 April 2014
Paper - 'Musical Publics in Early-Victorian Manchester', Panel on Sport and Leisure History in Manchester, Manchester Histories Festival 2014
Paper - 'Music at the Manchester Mechanics' Institution', RMA Research Student Conference, January 2014
Paper - 'Reading between the lines: Sir George Smart's annotated programmes for the 1836 Manchester Musical Festival', RNCM Research Student Symposium 2013