About me

Dr Sara Salloum

I am a professional lute player and prizewinning practice-based musicologist. My UK Arts Council-funded doctoral research on the rich culture of women’s lute playing in early modern England was recently commended by the Royal Musical Association (the foremost UK musicological society), with me being awarded the RMA Practice Research Prize 2025. The panel described my work as ‘rich and insightful [...] original and engaging [...] of particular interest is the experiential work on how the clothes worn by female lute players shaped movement and influenced performance choices’. This fully AHRC-funded doctoral work investigated the lute performance practices of gentry women in early seventeenth-century England through the analysis of material culture, lute manuscripts, and a practice-based methodology. My pursuits culminated in a thesis on the rich culture of women’s lute playing, as well as several innovative creative performance outputs which ranged from films of my own lute playing in reconstructed period clothing, to an original album of lute music. My doctoral work was highly original in its use of such a methodology, demonstrating the value and validity of this approach: several of my discoveries, such as the sympathetic relationship between the clothing of a gentry woman, her music table, and her lute technique, would not have been possible without the adoption of a practice-based approach.

I currently enjoy life in the North of England where I applies my skills to diverse pursuits ranging from university lecturing to freelance performing and writing. I now aspire to pursue new research which will investigate the Iberian vihuela de mano, seafaring musicians, and non-professional vihuela performances which took place across Iberia’s colonial empire c.1600.