Dr Polly Paulusma
Biography
Recording artist, One Little Independent Records
Associate Professor of Song & Literature, ICMP (Institute of Contemporary Music Performance), London
Panel tutor, PACE (Professional and Continuing Education), Madingley Hall, Cambridge
Polly Paulusma is a singer-songwriter scholar, touring recording artist, record producer, label founder, author and teacher. She tutors in songwriting and literature for the University of Cambridge and in songwriting for the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London. She has released eleven albums to date with One Little Independent Records (home of Björk), supported Bob Dylan, played Glastonbury, and founded her own folk label Wild Sound. Her songs have been published by Sony/ATV in the United States and her albums have received international acclaim.
Her PhD research on Angela Carter’s folk singing led to the publication of her monograph Angela Carter and Folk Music: Invisible Music, Prose and the Art of Canorography by Bloomsbury in 2023, and she has contributed chapters to Angela Carter's Pyrotechnics: A Union of Contraries (Bloomsbury 2022) and other academic books. Her musico-literary research has been published as articles in Contemporary Women’s Writing, English, and Folk Music Journal, and she is now undertaking practice-as-research projects involving locational songwriting and the efficacy of creative square breathing. She continues to make albums and is on tour this year in the UK and Europe.
Research Interests
Folk song, musico-literary studies, songfulness, oral traditions, women’s twentieth-century literature.
Major Awards and Prizes
1997 New Hall Scholar Award for attaining a first-class degree
2015 EFDSS (English Folk Dancy and Song Society) Creative Bursary Award winner
2019, 2020 UEA Music Award (twice)
2021 Angela Carter Society best chapter/article winner
2024 The Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust research award recipient
2025 Iowa City Songwriters Conference Scholarship award
2026 Folk Alliance International Scholarship award