Una McIlvenna was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Sydney (2011–2014). She investigates emotional responses to public execution in the early modern period, looking in particular at the use of songs and verse in accounts of crime and execution across Europe. Crime reports were often printed in huge numbers on cheap pamphlets and set to the tune of well-known songs, enabling the reader to sing along to the account of the (often violent) crime and the public execution of the condemned. Exploring how the emotional resonances of a familiar tune could be transferred or subverted in the new version of the song, this project reveals how music, balladry and performance played an integral role in the public's perception of crime and punishment. She was Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of Kent from 2015–2016, and from February 2017 is the Hansen Lecturer in History at The University of Melbourne.
Contact
una.mcilvenna@unimelb.edu.au
Further information
Research
Singing the News of Death: Song in Early Modern European Execution (1500–1900)
