Frankie Stevens

Lecturer in Music

Frankie Stevens is an operatic soprano, metal musician and scholar. 

She has a diverse range of interests that span across the history of music from classical to modern metal. She teaches across the undergraduate music degrees with a modular focus on specialist music practice, vocal studies, and music, sound and culture. Frankie’s research focusses on feminist critical musicology primarily within the field of metal music studies and she has presented her work internationally at a number of academic conferences (UK, IE, NL). Her recent work includes a chapter on the legacy of the operatic voice in heavy metal (Who Do We Think They Are? Deep Purple and Metal Studies) and chapters on Gothic and Symphonic Metal for the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. She has also co-edited the forthcoming book Strategies of Resistance in Metal Music, Culture, and Scholarship: Feminist Metal, to be published with Routledge.

Prior to joining Falmouth, Frankie studied Music (BMus) at the University of Birmingham specialising in operatic vocal performance and Arts and Culture (MA) at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands where her thesis explored women’s experiences of doom metal music and culture.

In her early career, Frankie was part of the YMV Choir for the Cultural Olympiad and sang at a number of prestigious venues and events including the Team GB launch party ‘Our Greatest Team Rises’ at the Royal Albert Hall (attended by Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) and the Cultural Olympiad in conjunction with YMV: Royal Opera House performance with Gareth Malone OBE.  

As a songwriter and performer, Frankie has toured the UK and Europe with black metal collective Denigrata and released the debut album Missa Defunctorum: Requiem Mass in A Minor. She is also currently working on a dark folk female-duo with Nachthexe entitled Dōlǒur. 

Contact details

Email Frankie.Stevens@falmouth.ac.uk

    Qualifications

    Qualifications

    Year Qualification Awarding body
    2019 MA The University of Groningen
    2016 BMus The University of Birmingham

    Research Interests

    Research interests and expertise

    Frankie's research interests include: Extreme metal music and culture particularly through the lenses of feminist ethnography and musicology, and operatic performance and healthy singing. 

    Research Outputs

    Publications and research outputs

    • Stevens, Frankie

      (2020), Blackened Audiotopia: Privatised Listening and Urban Experience, In: Metal Music Studies Journal, Intellect ltd, online, 6 (2), pp. 161-174, ISSN: 2052-4005, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Stevens, Frankie

      (2018), Defining Doom Through Women's Experience: Deterritorialising Doom Metal Signifiers, In: ISMMS/PSN Doing Metal, Being Punk,Doing Punk, Being Metal: Hybridity, Crossover and Difference in Punk and Metal Subcultures, 13-14 December 2018, De Montford University, Leicester UK., (Published)

    • Stevens, Frankie

      (2017), The Women of Doom: An Ethnographic Study of Women's Experience in Doom Metal, In: ICTM/SMI Annual Postgraduate Conference, 19-20 January 2018, The University of Maynooth, Ireland., (Published)

    • Waite, Simon

      (2023), Audiovisual Music Production: Influence of the Natural World on Process and Works, In: N/A, N/A, Penryn, Cornwall

    • Stevens, Frankie

      (2022), Abyssal Noise: Representations of Death and Dying in Extreme Metal Music, In: Embodying the Music and Death Nexus: Consolations, Salvations, Transformations, Emerald Publishing, London, England., ISBN: ISBN : 1-80117-766-X ISBN : 9781801177672

    • Parker, Will

      (2025), Red Lake / Black Mine - Album

    Teaching

    Areas of teaching

    • Classical Singing
    • critical theory
    • Cultural Studies
    • popular music studies
    • Vocal studies

    Courses taught

    • Popular Music BA(Hons)
    • Music BA(Hons)
    • Creative Music Technology BA(Hons)