Aine Palmer

Áine Palmer is a PhD candidate in Music History whose work considers the circulation of song and its material contexts. She specialises in 13th-century Western European vernacular music, particularly trouvère song. Her dissertation, ‘The Chansonnier Cangé: Music, Mensuration, and Materiality c. 1300’ reassesses F-Pn fr. 846 (otherwise known as trouv O or Cangé). By asking what the adoption of mensural notation can tell historians about the reception of trouvère song, Áine’s dissertation expands the scholastic context of the courtly love lyric and emphasises scribes’ role in adapting the tradition for a changing world.

Áine’s work also engages with musical transmission in more recent contexts, and since moving to the USA from Ireland she has become increasingly interested in popular music’s role in the formation of cultural identities. In 2023 she developed and delivered a seminar on the diasporic contexts of Irish pop entitled ‘Transatlantic Ireland: Race, Place, and Global Popular Music’, and she has delivered conference papers related to the topic.

Áine has presented her research at national and international conferences including the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Early Book Society, Leeds IMC, Kalamazoo ICMS, SMI and AMS. She holds a BA in Music and English Literature from Trinity College Dublin and has received multiple fellowships supporting her dissertation research, including the Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 and the Chateaubriand fellowships. In 2025 Áine will be a visiting scholar at KU Leuven as the Belgian-American Education Foundation Boynton Fellow.