Briony Luttrell
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Music, School of Business and Creative Industries
Location: Sunshine Coast
Briony is a musician, researcher, and educator whose expertise sits at an intersection of creative, technical, and theoretical approaches. Briony specializes in creative collaboration and has hundreds of creative works that encompass art music traditions, popular music, and experimental practices. Briony’s PhD contributes a new model for understanding and writing string arrangements for recorded popular music. Recent publications include a book retheorising songwriting with Andy Ward, and a journal article with Hannah Banks theorising queer reading as audience labour in Our Flag Means Death.
Briony's main research areas include: cultural semantics, multimodal analysis, listening, creative practice, creative collaboration, performance, creative wellbeing and healthy ageing. Currently, Briony is part of a number of research teams looking at capacity building in regional Australia, creative practice and health, and sustainable and equitable careers in the music industry.
Currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Briony has been a tertiary music educator since 2007 and is passionate about crafting educational experiences that use transdisciplinary perspectives and locate music making practices in their historical, sociocultural, and technological contexts.
HDR supervision
Available for supervision of HDR projects in music, creative practice, interdisciplinary creative industries, multimodal analysis, cultural semantics, social semiotics and more.
Current supervisions include:
- (Principal) PhD - Experiencing Equity: A feminist analysis of women and gender diverse songwriters' careers in regional and remote Queensland
- (Principal) Master of Creative Arts - Cultivating Resonant Relationships Through Vocality in a Time of Ecological Crisis: Lamentation as a Practice of Sympoiesis
- (Principal) Master of Creative Arts - Instruments of change: shifting the scene-agency ratio in songwriting practice
- (Co) Master of Creative Arts - The Dynamic Range of Songwriter Activism: Musical Approaches to the Cultural Aspects of Climate Change
- (Co) Master of Creative Arts - The cultural and economic significance of ‘covers’ music performance practice for musicians living in Brisbane: a case study.
Media Commentary
Available for media commentary for strings in popular music, strings in popular culture, string arranging, popular music cello, cultural meaning-making practices, listening analysis, creative collaboration, and creative practitioner wellbeing.
Research
Publications
Book chapter | Peer reviewed
Towards a Music Recording Nexus: Inviting the Audio Engineer Out of the Silo ↗
by Lachlan Goold, Andy Ward and Briony Luttrell
2026
Critical Listening Education in Sound Engineering: Theories and Strategies for Segmented Learning
In this chapter, we argue that music recording involves three domains of knowledge that have been previously siloed: musicianship, music production, and audio engineering. Each of these domains fundamentally engages in a shared action: critical listening. However, in the case of audio engineering, critical listening, as both an industrial term and as an act, is often and problematically treated as more of a scientific endeavour akin to notions of audiology and "good hearing". While some authors argue audio engineering is a creative process, there is yet to be appropriate theorisation that positions audio engineering as part of an overarching musical act. In this paper, we explore the Music Recording Nexus as a means to include audio engineering as part of a larger field of practice: music recording. In doing so, we seek to reframe the term "critical listening" and provide new definitions for playing, producing, and engineering music with the goal of de-siloing their associated domains of knowledge into a central and more industrially relevant theorisation. To make this case, we examine Technical Ear Training as an approach to skill development in audio engineering that has not been contextualised in their real-world application and continues to be neglected from inclusion in music recording as an outcome focused act.
Journal article | Peer reviewed
‘Oh my god this is happening’: How Our Flag Means Death staged an empathic mutiny against the labour of queer reading practices ↗
by Hannah Joyce Banks and Briony Luttrell
2026
Media International Australia
Our Flag Means Death (2022) is a television series set in the Golden Age of Piracy, premiering in March 2022 to critical acclaim and unprecedented audience engagement. It can be argued that this show is a deliberate romantic queer reading of historical facts. In this article we reflect on the social function of storytelling and audience labour within the historical and cultural contexts of fictional queer screen representations. We theorise queer reading as a practice of learning to recognize, identify and create patterns of semiotic resources, Intertextual Thematic Formations (Lemke 1995a, 1995b). This practice is a reaction to a history of being erased or relegated to subtext in fictional media, exacerbated by broader cultural and political contexts that criminalise, censor, and de-humanize LGBTQIA+ bodies and lives. We also make the case for queer reading being a particular form of audience labour, in that readers are asked to ‘do extra work’ to see queer bodies and communities in texts. This is especially important in cases where identities and communities are regularly symbolically annihilated, and those individuals are repeatedly required to perform that extra labour to “see themselves”. The popularity of Our Flag Means Death made it clear that this show resonated with both members of the LGBTQIA+ community and wider audiences. Season One is a unique case study where we explore how character, narrative, queerbaiting and coding are used to achieve a low/easy labour environment for a vulnerable viewer and how this is an act of care and empathy.
Journal article | Peer reviewed
Music education as symbolic action: critiquing Western music education rhetoric ↗
by Andy Ward, Briony Luttrell and Lachlan Goold
24 October 2025
Social Semiotics
This paper examines Western music education through Kenneth Burke's dramatism, revealing how traditional pedagogical practices function as symbolic actions perpetuating cultural hierarchies and conservative ideologies. We argue that institutionalised music education employs rhetorical mechanisms conflating scientistic and dramatistic approaches to music, particularly through repertoire selection and error correction. These mechanisms position certain works as inherently “correct” while othering alternatives, maintaining cultural supremacy that privileges Western Common Practice traditions and potentially limiting students’ creative development and contemporary career opportunities. We demonstrate how institutions tacitly deploy these mechanisms, creating self-perpetuating musical conservatism that disconnects students from industrial practices and innovation. In response, we propose the Shared Music Vocabulary (SMV) as an alternative framework acknowledging music education as rhetorical symbolic action entangled with social, political, and cultural identities. This approach prioritises intellectual property generation and embraces multiple disciplines simultaneously, offering more inclusive and industrially relevant music education.
Journal article | Peer reviewed
Devising, discomfort, and working with the unknown: making a show with music and theatre students at a regional university ↗
by Hannah Joyce Banks and Briony Luttrell
2025
Australasian Drama Studies
In this article we reflect on our experiences as practitioners and educators leading an annual devising collaboration between Music and Theatre at the University of the Sunshine Coast, that results in a new one-hour long production. We discuss the complexities of devising, in particular how do we navigate the balance of wellbeing with encouraging students to work outside of their comfort zones in a devised theatre process full of uncertainty? In response to pedagogy and devising scholarship, and themes that emerged from our four case studies we propose a new approach, the Creative Collaboration SeeSaw. Our aim in writing this article is to articulate our experiences of being director, musical director, and teachers as we navigate with our cohorts the tensions between care, comfort, discomfort, learning and safety in a collaborative devising process full of doubt and the unknown.
Report
Creative Conversations: a national study of Australian retirement living ↗
by Dana Dermody, Andy Ward, Mia Schaumberg, Daniel Wadsworth, Briony Luttrell, Alison Craswell, Christopher Askew, Hannah Joyce Banks, Lachlan Goold, Sarah Casey and Nicholas Stevens
2025
While the majority of Retirement Living (RL) residents have not yet accessed the government’s home-based care and support infrastructure, there is a growing expectation that many will require Support at Home (SAH) services in the near future. Given more than 317,000 older Australians will be living in RL communities by 2030 [3], the RL industry will have a critical role in supporting the health needs of older adults, ensuring the viability and sustainability of the aged care sector, however little is known about what this should look like in best-practice. This report aims to provide major industry operators, all tiers of government, and industrial peak bodies with meaningful data and recommendations on the future of the Australian Retirement Living Industry to ensure our nation is a world leader in the provision of housing, lifestyle, and health and wellbeing for older people.
Explore all Briony Luttrell's publications in UniSC Research Bank
Grants
11 June 2025
The Chair and The Cello: Developing industry guidelines for practicing creative safety
University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia, Sunshine Coast) - UniSC
Grant no. 0980030706.
Nicola Hyland, Carl Walling, Briony Luttrell, Alexandra Metse and Hannah Banks
1 January 2024 - 30 May 2025
Understanding the actors, networks, and resources to optimise mixed light industrial areas for creativity, commerce, circularity, and community engagement.
University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia, Sunshine Coast) - UniSC
Grant no. 0980028538.
Greg Mews, Andy Ward, Sarah Casey, Briony Luttrell and Nicholas Stevens
28 October 2024 - 31 March 2025
Music Producers Development Program
Arts Queensland
Grant no. 0980029307.
Kev Starkey, Andy Ward, Briony Luttrell and Lachlan Goold
1 January 2023 - 30 June 2024
Enlivening retirement communities through co-designed event and entertainment production.
University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia, Sunshine Coast) - UniSC
Grant no. 0980027809.
Lachlan Goold, Daniel Wadsworth, Hannah Banks, Briony Luttrell and Andy Ward
7 December 2022
Creative Conversations
The Trustee for Keyton Management Services Trust
Grant no. 0980027506.
Briony Luttrell, Christopher Askew, Alison Craswell, Mia Schaumberg, Daniel Wadsworth, Dana Dermody, Lachlan Goold, Hannah Banks, Sarah Casey, Nicholas Stevens and Andy Ward
1 October 2021 - 14 October 2022
In residence (USC): Interdisciplinary practice and creative exchange in Regional Queensland
Arts Queensland
Grant no. 0980027081.
Leah Barclay, Tricia King, Andy Ward, Briony Luttrell, Megan Williams, Hannah Banks, Kellie O'Dempsey and Lee McGowan
3 February 2022 - 17 March 2022
Events and Entertainment as Capacity Building Engine for Regional Australia: Mapping the Industry
Caloundra Chamber of Commerce
Grant no. 0980027259.
Briony Luttrell, Lachlan Goold and Andy Ward
Teaching and supervision
Teaching
Course leader
Program coordinator
Supervision
Masters Thesis Supervision - Current
A qualitative exploration of the mental health of professional musicians on the Sunshine Coast.
Students: Research student (name withheld)
Associated Researchers: Andy Ward, Briony Luttrell and Kathina Ali
2026
Masters Thesis Supervision - Completed
Instruments of change: shifting the scene-agency ratio in songwriting practice ↗
Students: Taylor Berrett
Associated Researchers: Andy Ward and Briony Luttrell
2024 - 2025
The making and proliferation of songs is not the result of individual people working in isolation, but the result of a complex interplay between creative practitioner and the cultural, social, spatial and temporal contexts in which they make. In literature relating to the social psychology of creativity and systems model of creativity there is significant theorisation of environment individual interaction and its effects on creative capability. In particular, organisational creativity research has explored how leaders can design deliberate enviro-social interventions to improve the creative capabilities, wellbeing, and output of organisation members. This project applies those principles of environment-individual interaction to the creative practice of songwriting and investigates the question: can a songwriter affect their experience of creativity and creative productivity by reframing background elements of their creative setting as tools in their practice? This exegesis re-contextualises organisational strategies and interventions from social, environmental, and organizational creativity through Burke’s conceptualisation of language as symbolic action (Burke, 1945) to investigate how and when changes in perception of the creative environment may be beneficial in the practitioner’s experience of making creative artefacts. I created a collection of new popular songs as a practice-led case study to investigate the efficacy of personal environmental interventions in my own creative practice. I documented this process through phenomenological autoethnography supported by reflective journaling and reflexive thematic analysis to investigate creative scene-agent ratio shift — the reframing of background elements in my enviro-social setting as manipulatable tools in my songwriting practice. I then investigated how this might be useful to other songwriters and creative practitioners in supporting their creativity and creative productivity.
Masters Thesis Supervision - Completed
The Dynamic Range of Songwriter Activism: Musical Approaches to the Cultural Aspects of Climate Change ↗
Students: Shannon Carroll
Associated Researchers: Lachlan Goold, Briony Luttrell and Andy Ward
2022 - 2025
The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reconfirms unequivocally that human activities are warming the Earth with immense implications and for the first time includes the significance of social aspects of mitigation. Subsequently, scientists are calling on creative industries practitioners to increase their engagement in the cultural aspects of climate change mitigation, adaptation, and communication. Whilst significant research positions music as an essential and unifying element of cultural shifts and social movements, there is comparatively little on how songwriting can generate and influence climate change discourse. This research asks: How can prominent songwriters with experience in varying approaches to musical activism contribute valuable knowledge toward future praxis and musical engagement with the cultural aspects of climate change mitigation, adaptation and communication? This thesis views the problem through Burke’s Dramatism theory, with linkages to framing theory and social movement theory, under the umbrella of moderate social constructionism. The methods include Reflexive Thematic Analysis of semi-structured interviews with professional songwriters Jack Johnson, Jim Moginie (Midnight Oil), and Holly Rankin (Jack River) contextualised with a bricolage of two song analysis models. The findings illuminate specific songwriting techniques, broader approaches, acknowledge challenges associated with musical activism, and present tools to navigate tensions. I propose the Dynamic Range of Musical Activism (DRMA) continuum to emphasise the range of strategies used by professional songwriters, including established methods of loud and quiet activism. This research aims to provide a resource to support and encourage songwriter engagement with cultural aspects of climate change mitigation, adaptation and communication with an emphasis on the variety of strategies available.
Masters Thesis Supervision - Current
Getting back on the horse: a study into the damaging impact of being a Singer-Songwriter and its effect on making-music interdependently, to find tailored ways forward.
Students: Research student (name withheld)
Associated Researchers: Lachlan Goold, Karen Hands, Briony Luttrell and Ginna Brock
2022
Masters Thesis Supervision - Current
Cultivating Resonant Relationships Through Vocality in a Time of Ecological Crisis: Lamentation as a Practice of Sympoiesis
Students: Research student (name withheld)
Associated Researchers: Briony Luttrell and Andy Ward
2022
Explore all Briony Luttrell's supervisions in UniSC Research Bank
Professional
Awards and memberships
Australian Post-graduate Award scholarship (for PhD)
Queensland University of Technology (Australia, Brisbane) - QUT
Education
2014 - 2017
Doctor of Philosophy
PhD
Queensland University of Technology (Australia, Brisbane) - QUT
A cultural semantics of string arrangement for recorded Popular music: A model for analysis and practice. PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR: Prof. Phil Graham. ASSOCIATE SUPERVISOR: Dr Kiley Gaffney.
2013 - 2013
Bachelor of Music(BM or BMus)
Bachelor of Music (Honours) – First Class
Queensland University of Technology (Australia, Brisbane) - QUT
A Semiotic Approach to the Analysis and Creation of String Arrangements for Recorded Popular Music. SUPERVISOR: Prof. Phil Graham.
2004 - 2007
Bachelor of Music(BM or BMus)
Queensland University of Technology (Australia, Brisbane) - QUT
Media
Briony Luttrell's specialist areas of knowledge include:
- Evaluation of health and support services
- Interdisciplinary
- Multimodal analysis
- Listening
- Musicology
- Cultural semantics
- Popular music
- Creative collaboration
- Creative practice
- Creative wellbeing
- Performance
- Strings
- Praxis
Rocking the Crocoseum: How Lucy ended up centre stage at Australia Zoo
4 FebFrom rallying a Crocoseum crowd at Australia Zoo to carving a PhD path shaped by theatre, motherhood and well-timed yeses, Lucy Orkild’s journey had many twists and turns that have delivered her some interesting experiences.