New Appointments in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Liverpool Hope University

Liverpool Hope's Faculty of Arts and Humanities is pleased to welcome a number of new colleagues to its staff.

Dr Anthony Cawley, Lecturer in Communication

Dr Anthony Cawley was appointed as Lecturer in Communication in the Department of Politics, History, Media and Communication at Liverpool Hope University in January 2012.

Before moving to Hope, Dr Cawley held the position of Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society (ISKS) at the University of Limerick. The role involved supporting research activities in the humanities and social sciences across the University. Dr Cawley’s own research interests during his time at Limerick, both collaborative and lone-scholar, focused on innovation in Ireland’s digital games industry, the development of online journalism in Ireland, and news-media framing of Ireland’s public and private sectors during the economic crisis.

Dr Cawley was awarded a PhD by Dublin City University in 2003 for a study on innovation in Ireland’s digital media industry between 1999 and 2002. Post-PhD, Dr Cawley worked as a research officer in the Society Information and Media (SIM) research centre in the University’s School of Communications. During this time, he worked on the multi-partner BEACON project to examine future uses and applications of broadband in the European Union, in line with the European Commission’s i2010 agenda. The EC funded the project under the Information Society Technologies strand of Framework Programme 6. In 2006 and 2007, he worked with the Irish Department of Justice and its Internet Advisory Board on issues related to safe use of online media. 

Dr Cawley’s teaching areas include communication, media studies, new media and online journalism. He has published in national (Irish) and international peer-reviewed journals, including Journalism Studies, Media History, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Telecommunications Policy, Information, Communication and Society, Futures, and Irish Communications Review.

Dr Laura Hamer, Lecturer in Music

Dr Laura Hamer joined Liverpool Hope University in January 2012 from The Open University.

Dr Hamer completed her undergraduate studies in music at Brasenose College, Oxford in 2004 and then completed an MA and PhD in musicology at Cardiff University. Her doctoral thesis presented an examination of the activities and reception of women musicians working in France during the interwar period, and for this she spent one year collecting archival research in Paris. After completing her PhD, she worked as a post-doctoral Research Assistant at Birmingham Conservatoire of Music.

Her research specialisms lie in the areas of women in music, nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, and reception and criticism studies.

Dr Claire Molloy, Senior Lecturer in News Media

Dr Claire Molloy has been appointed as Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, Politics, Media and Communication at Liverpool Hope University. Following a career in commercial photography and communications, she began teaching media and film in 1997 and previously held posts at University of Brighton and Edge Hill University. She is the author of Memento and Popular Media and Animals and co-editor of Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism and American Independent Cinema: Indie, indiewood and beyond.

Dr Alberto Sanna, Lecturer in Music

Formerly a Lecturer in Music at Magdalen College, Jesus College and Lincoln College, University of Oxford, musicologist and violinist Alberto Sanna joined Liverpool Hope University’s Music Department in January 2012.

Alberto’s scholarly work focuses on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music, and is based on a blending of critical-theoretical with historical-contextual approaches. Further research interests are historical performance practice and music analysis. A book on Arcangelo Corelli’s poetics of the sonata is currently in preparation. Future projects include an investigation into Alessandro Scarlatti’s compositional strategies in the setting of literary texts to music and a series of critical editions of seventeenth-century solo violin music.

As a violinist, Alberto performs on period instruments solo, chamber and orchestral music from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. From 1995 to 2005, he freelanced throughout Europe with numerous orchestras. From 1997 to 2001, he directed the ensemble ‘Prometeus’, recording the CD A la vida bona and the CD-Rom Le sette città regie del regno di Sardegna. In 2005 he embarked upon a new project focused on live programmes and recordings of neglected repertoires from seventeenth-century Italy. The CD Fidibus Canere, released in 2007, launched the project with a rich collection of violin sonatas, while introducing the main aesthetic ideas underlying the whole enterprise. A new recording is currently in preparation.

Born in Cagliari, Sardinia, Alberto was trained at the Milan Conservatory, the Longy School of Music in Boston, and the University of Oxford. He studied modern violin with Felice Cusano and Zinaida Gilels, historical violin with Phoebe Carrai and Manfredo Kraemer, and completed a doctorate in historical musicology at Oxford University under the supervision of Professor Laurence Dreyfus.