Michelle Assay

Michelle Assay is currently a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Huddersfield (UK), working on the project ‘Shakespeare and Censorship in Soviet/Post-Soviet Music, Film and Theatre’. Born in Tehran and trained in piano performance at the Tchaikovsky Academy in Kiev and at the Satie Conservatoire in Paris, she obtained her PhD from the Universities of Sorbonne and Sheffield with a dissertation on ‘Hamlet in the Stalin era’, which will be published in revised form by Routledge. She is the founder and chair of an international study group on ‘Shakespeare and Music’ and regularly coordinates research events on ‘Shakespeare in Central and Eastern Europe’. Alongside publications in these areas, she is co-author of a major life-and-works study of Polish/Soviet/Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg for Toccata Press due to appear in 2021, has published on the Danish composer, Carl Nielsen, is on the editorial board of Carl Nielsen Studies, and is the books reviews editor for the Shakespeare Forum. She also works in the area of music and politics in Iran, focusing in particular on women's rights. She continues to appear in concerts as a solo and chamber pianist, and is a reviewer and writer for Gramophone magazine.