Holly Payne

Holly is currently pursuing an MSt in Musicology at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Dr Emanuela Vai. She is a first study flautist and an aspiring organologist. Outside of university Holly works within the heritage sector at Hampton Court Palace. She holds a first class BMus degree from Royal Holloway University of London, where she wrote her undergraduate dissertation on the use of the flute beyond Western classical frameworks, interviewing jazz, rock, and charanga flautists. Her current master’s thesis is titled ‘The Social Lives of Flutes: The Representation of the Flute in Museum Contexts’. It explores how flutes are displayed in the Bate Collection and the Pitt Rivers Museum, as well as the use of musical imagery in the Ashmolean Museum. The project aims to highlight the ubiquity and cultural relevance of the flute within both organology and anthropology. A personal highlight for Holly during her research at the Bate was playing an 1847 Boehm system flute, crafted by the inventor himself!’