Mel Mercier

Biography

Mel is the Chair of Performing Arts at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Mel completed a BMus at UCC in 1989, and a Master of Fine Arts in World Music at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, in 1991, and was awarded a PhD from the University of Limerick in 2011. Mel has an outstanding record of creative output as a composer and performer, and an excellent record of academic leadership and engagement in scholarly activity. He has an international reputation as a composer for theatre, having composed music for many critically acclaimed, award-winning productions and installations, and an international profile as a performer of Irish traditional music, and as a collaborator across a range of music genres. He has twenty-five years experience of teaching and mentoring at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, alongside initiating and directing academic projects, conferences and symposia, and curating festivals, concert series, and community outreach initiatives.

Research Interest

Mel’s own research encompasses creative practice, in composition and performance, as well as more traditional, academic scholarship, most often within the disciplinary frameworks of ethnography and performance studies. Mel has a record of sustained, award-winning, creative output as a composer, and has built an international reputation as a composer of music for theatre. Over the last two decades has composed the music for many critically acclaimed, award-winning theatre productions and installations that have been presented in Ireland, the UK, Europe and America.