The University of Liverpool has announced an exciting new PhD collaboration with the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA).
The collaboration will see the university support PhD opportunities for LIPA staff, enabling practice-led and practice-based research across the performing arts, creative practice, music, performance, creative industries and arts education.
Dean of the School of the Arts, Professor Peter Buse and LIPA's Principal and CEO Professor Sean McNamara signed an MoU in September 2026, to launch the collaboration.
Professor Sean McNamara said: "This agreement marks an exciting new phase in LIPA's relationship with the University of Liverpool. By bringing together the University's research expertise and LIPA's distinctive strengths in practice-led learning and creative professional practice, we can create valuable new opportunities for our staff and postgraduate students.
"We are delighted to be developing this partnership and look forward to the ideas, collaborations and wider impact it will generate."
The provision of PhD study formalises LIPA's long-term relationship with the University of Liverpool, which has flourished through connections and collaborations between Music Departments at both institutions.
The collaboration has emerged from long term discussions combining LIPA's distinctive practice-based approach to research, rooted in professional practice, with the University of Liverpool's renowned expertise in the theoretical, historical and cultural study of music and the humanities.
Lisa Colton, Professor of Musicology at the University of Liverpool, said: "This agreement reinforces our ongoing work with LIPA, adding a research dimension in which PhD training can be offered both to LIPA staff and new external postgraduate students who would benefit from combined supervision from the two institutions.
"These new opportunities, particularly around practice-led research, are really exciting."
The first joint PhD students will commence their studies in January 2027.
