Flannery McIntyre is a PhD candidate in Musicology and Medieval Studies. Her dissertation,“Music and the Materiality of Knowledge in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,” offers an alternative narrative for the role of music in Late Antique and Early Medieval culture. Whereas music in this period has traditionally been understood as a precursor to the liturgical standardization and the development of music notation in the ninth century, such a teleological focus obscures other facets of musical activity. Her approach, by contrast, centers material culture, allowing for a larger, more eclectic source base. Through canonical music sources, historical, and archaeological materials, she shows that music was used as a tool for scientific inquiry, a means of political legitimization, a way to establish women’s intellectual authority, and a bridge between classical and medieval intellectual traditions. While scholars have abandoned the pejorative label “the dark ages,” its effects on musical scholarship are still palpable. Her dissertation dispels this myth of musical lack, illuminating the richness and multivalence of early medieval music. While many of her sources come from the Latin language centers of the fourth through tenth centuries – that is modern-day North Africa, Italy, Iberia, France, and Germany – some of them come from as far away as Kazakhstan and China, displaying the global reach of music during the end of the ancient and beginning of the medieval world.
Her research has been generously supported by the 2026 SMT-40 Dissertation Fellowship from the Society for Music Theory, a Eugene K. Wolf Travel Grant from the American Musicological Society (2025), the Paul J. Alexander Memorial Fellowship from the Graduate Division (2025), the Medieval Academy of America/CARA Summer Scholarship (2023), and the Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study (2021-2023). Before starting her PhD, she earned an MPhil in Medieval Archaeology from the University of Cambridge and an A.B. in Archaeology and the Ancient World (Classical), Medieval Cultures, and Music (History/Theory/Composition) from Brown University.
Flannery has taught as the instructor of record for courses on ‘Shakespeare and Music’ and ‘Ancient and Medieval Music Archaeology,’ and as a graduate student instructor for courses on music in American culture and the history of music for both majors and non-majors.
