Joe Loss Lectureship
The Joe Loss Lectureship – currently held by Dr. Ilana Webster-Kogen – supports advanced academic research and teaching in Jewish music. Alongside the lectureship, JMI offers a thriving scholarship scheme for MA and PhD students, supported by the Mildred Loss and Sir Jack Lyons Studentship Scheme. Research projects may be theoretical, practice-led, or fieldwork-based. Prospective students are encouraged to contact Dr. Webster-Kogen to discuss their interests and study options.
History
In 1991 the Joe Loss Research Fellowship in Jewish Music was established at City University of London. It was upgraded to a lectureship in 1998 and in 1999 transferred to SOAS University of London, where it continues to thrive as part of the Department of Music.
The post has been held by leading scholars in the field: Dr Alexander Knapp (1992–2006), Dr Abigail Wood (2006–2014), and currently Dr Ilana Webster-Kogen (2014-). Each has contributed significantly to the development of Jewish music studies in the UK and internationally.
Joe Loss Lecturers
Dr Alexander Knapp
First Joe Loss Lecturer in Jewish Music
1992–2006
Alexander Knapp is a musicologist, ethnomusicologist, composer, arranger, and pianist. He graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge, with MA, MusB, and PhD degrees in music. For more than 50 years, he has published and lectured in the UK, USA, Western and Eastern Europe, Israel, Western Russia, Eastern Siberia, and China, on many aspects of Jewish music: Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi; liturgical, paraliturgical, folk, popular, classical; and interrelationships with Christian and Islamic cultures.
Among numerous other articles, he has contributed entries on Jewish art music to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Second Edition). His main focus has been on the life and work of the Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch; and a volume entitled Ernest Bloch Studies, that he co-edited for Cambridge University Press, and to which he contributed substantially, was published in 2016.
Alex has been appointed to academic and administrative positions at Wolfson College Cambridge, Goldsmiths’ College, and Royal College of Music. In 1992, he was appointed Joe Loss Research Fellow (latterly Lecturer) in Jewish Music at City University London. And from 1999 until taking early retirement in 2006, he held this position when it was transferred to SOAS. He is currently a member of the Ernest Bloch Legacy Committee (Newport, Oregon), trustee of the Jewish Music Institute, and Chairman of the International Ernest Bloch Society.
Dr Abigail Wood
Second Joe Loss Lecturer in Jewish Music
2006–2014
Dr Abigail Wood is an ethnomusicologist and expert in Jewish music, currently serving as a lecturer in ethnomusicology at the University of Haifa. From 2006 to 2014, she held the prestigious position of Joe Loss Lecturer in Jewish Music at SOAS, University of London. She earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2004, where her research focused on Yiddish song in contemporary North America, under the supervision of Dr Ruth Davis.
Before joining SOAS, Dr Wood lectured in music at the University of Southampton (2002–2006). Her scholarly work explores a wide range of topics including klezmer music, Yiddish song, Jewish-Christian musical interactions, and the musical cultures of immigrant communities in Israel. In 2013, she published her acclaimed monograph “And We’re All Brothers”: Singing in Yiddish in Contemporary North America, which examines the role of Yiddish song in shaping cultural identity and community.
Dr Ilana Webster-Kogen
Current Joe Loss Lecturer in Jewish Music
2014-Current
Dr Ilana Webster-Kogen is an ethnomusicologist specialising in music, diaspora, and ethnicity in the urban Middle East. She was appointed Joe Loss Lecturer in Jewish Music at SOAS in 2014 and became Senior Lecturer in 2019. Her first book, “Citizen Azmari: Making Ethiopian Music in Tel Aviv” (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), explores how Ethiopian and Eritrean migrants use music as a form of political expression. It won the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Jewish Music Section publication prize in 2019.
Her current research, supported by JMI, investigates the circulation of Moroccan Torah scrolls between North Africa, France, and Israel, focusing on cantillation practices and their gendered and ethnic dimensions. This project began with the JMI-hosted Judeo-Arabic conference-workshop Yallah in 2020.
Ilana’s work has appeared in Ethnomusicology Forum, African and Black Diaspora, and the Journal of African Cultural Studies. At SOAS, she teaches Jewish and Middle Eastern music, hip hop, and cultural theory. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Associate Director for Student Experience and Outcomes.
