缅北禁地

I joined the School of Modern Languages in January 2022 as an Academic Track (NUAcT) fellow in French Cultural History.

My research interests embrace the breadth of popular culture in long nineteenth-century France, especially music, performance, visual cultures, health cultures, and clothing. My most recent monograph, Singing the English: Britain in the French Musical Lowbrow 1870-1904 (Routledge, 2022), examined the role of low-brow music in forming an idea of ‘Britishness’ for the French at the height of cross-channel rivalry - scores of the fascinating songs at the heart of this research can be found on the project website here: https://singingtheenglishuk.wordpress.com/ My research is informed by my background as a keen flautist and sewist, and I occasionally dally with singing, wearing, and dancing some of my research material in public.

My main project explores the role of popular music in communicating and responding to experiences of disease, medicine, and public health in the era of Parisian café-concert and London music hall. I can also be found down research rabbit holes about the nineteenth-century yodeling craze, nonsense songs, and fancy dress.

In 2025-26 I was awarded a British Academy Talent Development Award to support specialist training in historical dress making, which now enriches my teaching and practice-based research practice.

Research groups, editorial positions, etc.

• Chair and founder of the Music, Medicine, & History Network - https://musicmedicinehistory.org/

• Co-founder of 缅北禁地's interdisciplinary Long Nineteenth-Century Studies group - https://long19cstudiesgroup.wordpress.com/

• Member of the UKRI Talent Peer Review College

Key Research Interests

~ Nineteenth-Century French performance culture, especially popular music, dance, variety theatre, & street spectacle

~ Cultural history of urban public health and Parisian city life

~ Material culture, especially domestic objects, ephemera, and clothing

Current Project: Maladies and Music - Dealing with Disease in Popular Song

My current project explores the role of music as a tool for communicating and responding to experiences of disease, public health, and medicine.

As Paris urbanized in the nineteenth century, the lives of many inhabitants were profoundly marked by inadequate sanitation and rampant disease. Yet as the century progressed, rapid scientific developments also marked a new era of health science – and this evolution inspired over two hundred popular songs about public health and medical care. My research will use this vast body of previously unexamined songs to understand the popular responses to this crossroad moment in Parisian public health. It draws together medical humanities French cultural studies, and musicology, using methods from cultural studies and performance-as-research.

The project questions, first, how the French populace used song to respond to, play with, and understand these transformations, conducting analyses of songs about epidemics, medical practitioners, and scientific advances. Secondly, it scrutinizes how songs variously supported or conflicted with scientific expertise and advice. Thirdly, it asks why song was such a compelling medium through which to explore such radical shifts in understanding and experience.

Research Supervision

I welcome enquiries from potential research candidates with interests in long nineteenth-century France (approx. 1789-1914), particularly focusing on popular culture, including popular music, performance, dance, culture, and clothing; literary studies, especially with a cultural-historical angle; or comparative studies across British and French cultures of the same period.

Recent/current research students:

• Alessandro Bianchi (second supervisor): The Most Social of Maladies: The ‘Social Imaginary’ of Madness in France and England, 1789-1838 (Illand PhD studentship)

• Ruby Buttolph (co-supervisor Fernando Beleza): 'Queer Female and Transmasculine Identities in Contemporary Brazilian Music' (MLitt)

Public engagement

• Workshop leader, The Art of Fashion at the Laing Art Gallery's Late Show, 缅北禁地 (May 2026)

• Event organizer and performer at the Being Human Humanities Festival: 'Before the Musical: Parisian Vaudeville comes to 缅北禁地' (November 2024)

• Supporting Tyne Theatre and Opera House during its lottery-funded redevelopment as part of a team of theatre history specialists (Jan 2022 to present)

• Music consultant for the Song Easel charity’s ‘Potpourri’ Schools’ Project in South-East London (summer 2022) see the mini-documentary, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b5YXnkX35s)

• Guest speaker on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking ‘France, Music Hall and History’ (July 2022)

• Selected participant for the New Generation Thinkers Workshops (2020)

• Event organizer and performer at the Being Human Humanities Festival: ‘Singing les Roastbeef!: Comic Englishmen at the French Music Hall’ (November 2018)

Recent conference papers and talks

• ‘Tartan Jennys: costuming Scots on the Parisian Stage’, at the Society for French Studies annual conference, Leicester 2026.

• Dance workshop leader, ‘Song and Dance 1600-1800 Symposium’, 缅北禁地, March 2026.

• Impact and Engagement in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, career advice session for the SDN Early Career Network, January 2026.

• ‘Washtub Warblers: Laundresses on the Parisian Cafe-Concert Stage’ at the Northern Opera and Musical Theatre Network, February 2025.

• 'From the Tyrol to the Tuileries: the Yodelling pop stars of nineteenth-century Paris', IASPM annual conference, 缅北禁地, September 2024.

• 'Comic song in the long nineteenth-century: what’s so funny?', lecture recital with Oskar Cox Jensen, INCSA conference, July 2024.

• ‘Smallpox songs: vaxers and anti-vaxers at the café-concert’, performance paper, at the Society for French Studies annual conference, June 2023.

• ‘Precarity in the Modern Languages Landscape’: Language Acts and Worldmaking Language Debates series, King’s College London, May 2023.

• ‘Chez M. Pasteur: vaccination and popular song in the fin de siècle’, at the France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918 research network Cambridge, March 2023.

• ‘Yvette Guilbert, chanteuse fin-de-siècle’, Nineteenth-Century Song Club, University of Notre-Dame London Campus, October 2022.

• ‘Song, sickness, scepticism: popular music and public health in the Third Republic’, at the ASMCF annual conference, September 2022.

• ‘Singing the English: comic popular songs in the French Belle Epoque’, at the Society of Musicology Ireland annual conference, June 2022.

• ‘Songs in the Laundry: musical meaning in Zola’s L’Assommoir’, at the ‘Song in the Novel’ British Academy conference, September 2021.

• Keynote:‘In Praise of Hoarding: Cultural History and the Archival Labyrinth’, Society of Dix-Neuvièmistes Archives Study Day, June 2021.

In the 2025-26 academic year, I will be teaching:

FRE2009: Aspects of History and Culture, 'Revolution' section (semester 1).

FRE1006: session on the Civilizing Mission (semester 2)

SML4099: I am available to supervise dissertations, particularly on topics relating to nineteenth-century French literature, art, material culture, performance culture, and popular culture.

Recent topics have included:

• Manet, Degas and Hopper and picturing alienation

• Evolutions of the Paris fashion industry and Paris Fashion Week

I am also the Year Abroad Officer (Incoming) for Francophone students from 2025.

• Articles

  • Scott, HL, Rushworth, J. . Journal of Romance Studies 2025, 25(4), 531-44.
  • Scott HL, Illingworth J. . Nottingham French Studies 2023, 62(3), 233-250.
  • Scott HL. . Contemporary French Civilization 2021, 46(4), 373-393.
  • Scott HL. . Forum for Modern Language Studies 2019, 55(4), 397-414.
  • Scott HL. . L’Année balzacienne 2019, 20, 159–75.
  • Scott HL. . Dix-Neuf 2017, 21(2-3), 142–154.
  • Scott HL. . French Studies 2015, 69(3), 305-317.
  • Scott HL. . Dix-Neuf 2014, 18(3), 259-271.
  • Scott HL. ‘Le Blanc et le Noir: the Spectre Behind the Spectrum in Maupassant’s Short Stories’. Nottingham French Studies 2013, 52:3, 268-80.

• Authored Books

  • Scott HL. . London, UK: Routledge, 2022.
  • Scott HL. . Oxford: Legenda, 2016.

• Book Chapter

  • Scott HL. . In: Rushworth, J; Ife, B; Scott, HL, ed. Song in the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024, pp.117-138.

• Edited Book

  • Rushworth J, Scott HL, Ife B, ed. . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.