SETTING THE STAGE

In the early 1980s, around the time her home country of Argentina was taking its first steps as a fledgling new democracy, Mariana López was born in Buenos Aires.

She had plenty of friends and did well at school. Her parents had both been to university and, despite an almost two-hour each way commute, she was keen to join the prestigious Universidad de Buenos Aires, where her father had studied.

But curiously, and despite early academic success, Mariana says she never really enjoyed her time in compulsory education.

“I hated going to school. I hated its structure. I saw so much unfairness in it,” she says. “I noticed that sometimes the good kids would get told off for nothing, because they couldn’t deal with the kids that actually were causing trouble.”

She puts this down to her built-in sense of social justice, but whatever the reason, she was determined that her higher education would be a different experience.

From an early age, Mariana had enjoyed the arts. She played the piano as a youngster, and took up ballet at the age of ten, which she continued into adulthood.

“But I decided to do an arts degree late in the day,” she said. “I did think about other things like environmental sustainability – I loved ecology and nature – but I’d wanted to avoid things like maths and chemistry which I didn’t really like. I really wanted to enjoy my studies.”

Settling on a degree in Arts with specialisation in Music, her approach paid off and her undergraduate degree – programmes in Argentina are typically longer than the UK, with five-year durations being common – was the success she’d hoped for.

“We studied music from medieval times to contemporary times, and we’d do things like philosophy of music and sociology of music. I did a module on medieval music – a topic I’d never considered before – and I really loved it. I had started taking harp lessons at the time, I bought a medieval gothic harp and played in an ensemble for a couple of years – we’d perform in full medieval costume!”

Having enjoyed her undergraduate degree so much, Mariana started to look toward her higher degrees. She was keen to study for a Masters and the idea of studying abroad seemed to run in the family.

“My dad studied in the UK when I was a teenager – my parents specialise in teaching English as a foreign language – and my sister had also studied abroad, so going to the UK seemed quite sensible.”

All that medieval music had left an impression. York’s rich heritage seemed appealing, and for a while medieval studies were considered. Then a change of direction occurred to her.

“I’d always been interested in applying music to film and television. So I wondered if I should do that instead. It was a coincidence that the University was planning to open the new Theatre, Film and Television department that year.”

And so it was that Mariana was among the very first students to enrol in the University's new Department of Theatre, Film and Television, now called School of Arts and Creative Technologies.

FINDING RESONANCE

Mariana clearly remembers the moment that set her on her research journey.

“When I was doing my Master’s degree I was keen, as many international students are, to make the most of my time at York, so I came across a one-day workshop organised by Damian Murphy and Jude Brereton,” she says. 

“It was held at the National Centre for Early Music, and was called ‘Virtual Audio and Past Environments: Audio and Acoustics in Heritage Applications’. It opened a door to a whole new field of study.”

To Mariana, the subject sounded “like magic”, and she saw a neat dovetail into her love of medieval music and the possibility of extending her knowledge into sound more broadly.

The event, says Mariana, would go on to play a huge part in her fledgling research career.

She said: “It wasn’t just about the history of medieval music, but an exploration on the impact of built and natural environments on those sounds. What’s more it was more than just music, it was every sound that was part of an experience.”

Having decided to apply for a PhD, it was time to run that gauntlet of seeking funding – a long and winding road that even took her back home to Argentina for a year. Although Mariana believes the financial landscape then was far better than now, it still took a lot of applying, rejection, re-applying, number crunching and more applying to raise even the tuition fees. And living expenses came on top of that.

“Even now I tell people I’m still tired,” she laughs. “But I was lucky in the sense that some opportunities were open to me that would be more competitive now. Because the Department was very new, I was able to do a lot of teaching – there was no-one else to do it. I also worked at a bookshop in town and at a travel company.”

At the time, Mariana’s day would most likely take in a shift at the bookstore or travel company starting at 9am, after which she’d walk to campus for 2pm to teach until around 5.30pm, then work into the evening until 10pm.

But she’s quick to reject the notion that only this level of self-sacrifice can deliver success. 

“These days I tell my PhD students not to do that – it isn’t healthy,” she says. “Circumstances are different for different people and, to be honest, I’ve always pushed myself a lot – it’s quite possible I could have succeeded without doing all that. What’s more, I now champion wellbeing activities within the University and even run free Zumba classes for staff and students to help them find a space to unwind and build a sense of community.”