Dr. Kimberly Francis

Biography

Kimberly Francis is a feminist musicologist and an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Guelph, where she also serves as the Director of Interdisciplinary Studies for the College of Arts and an affiliate of the Sexualities, Genders, Social Change program. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender and cultural engagement, championing equitable and inclusive practices in the field of musicology. Francis has received international recognition for her work, including the Glen Haydon Award for her PhD in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010. She has served as an International Fellow with the American Association of University Women, an ERASMUS Mundus Visiting Scholar at Sheffield University in 2016, and was a scholar-in-residence at Potsdam University in 2015. In August 2021, she presented at the Bard Music Festival in New York, which focused on women musicians. Francis hosted the 30th Anniversary of the international Feminist Theory & Music conference at the University of Guelph in July 2022, supported by an SSHRC Connections Grant. Her current research is backed by a five-year SSHRC Insight Grant, co-PI Sofie Lachapelle, exploring French speech sounds in education, medicine, law, culture, and entertainment from 1850-1914. She is co-editing a series of collected essays on creative women in the shadow of World War II and is working on a monograph about French, white women composers' engagement with the occult during the interwar years. Additionally, she co-curates the Sonic Tapestry series capturing Guelph musicians' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Francis authored 'Teaching Stravinsky: Nadia Boulanger Consecration Modernist Icon', which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award in 2016, and has published extensively in several academic journals. She is an active member of the American Musicological Society, currently chairing the Membership Professional Development Committee and co-chairing the Sustainable Mentorship Program.

Research Interests