About Us

Dr Jenny Mander, Faculty of Modern Languages, Associate Director for the Study of Global Human Movement, University of Cambridge began her research on the theory of narrative with reference to autobiographical fiction of the French eighteenth century. She has since continued to publish on the history of the ‘rise’ of the modern novel and increasingly on early globalisation, colonialism, the ethics of hospitality and intercultural relations from the age of Enlightenment.

Mark Tinkler is artistic director of English Pocket Opera Company (EPOC) and the Cambridge-based CAMS Music Trust (CMT). He is an ex St. Johns College, Cambridge chorister and an ex-opera singer who now works as an opera director and educator. He has taught at many leading teaching institutions including Queen Mary’s (London University), Central Saint Martin’s College of Art, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music.  Mark founded EPOC in 1993 – a music charity that, amongst other things, produces opera for, by and with children – often up to 50,000 in any one year. He lives in Cambridge and, as artistic director of CMT, runs many community music events, the Cambridge Community Orchestras and leads workshops in schools and the local community.

Katie Hawks is a medieval historian studying monasteries, which were famous for hospitality and ale.  She is also a musicologist, and has written lots of stuff about the music of Handel.  Katie is a keen choral singer and conductor and has run and conducted a number of choirs in Cambridge and the South-East.  Since being back in Cambridge after some years away, she founded an all-female renaissance choir, St Radegund’s Voices, and plays cello (very badly) in and sometimes conducts (a bit better) the Cambridge Community Orchestra.

English Pocket Opera Company

English Pocket Opera Company (EPOC) is based in a Camden primary school in London and works with up to 50,000 children per year, producing musically-driven, multi-disciplinary programmes in partnership with a range of social, artistic and educational organisations. The company exists to inspire creativity and build confidence and social skills through music to people to realise their full potential. EPOC aims to demonstrate the significant benefits that music can bring and its power to transform lives and communities.  Lockdown 2020 has meant that EPOC has had to postpone performances at the Royal Albert Hall, a whole school performance of The History of Music (in 60 mins) and community performances of Bizet’s Carmen in Bosnia and Herzegovina.