The Department of Music is delighted to announce the appointment of three new members of staff: Thomas Baynes, Estera Jaros and Wayne Weaver.
Who's who?
Thomas Baynes has been appointed Lecturer in Music and Screen Media. A composer working across contemporary, film, and mixed media contexts, his recent projects include the critically acclaimed play The Anatomy of Pain (2025), museum installation Austen 250: Beyond the Bonnets (2025); short film What We Leave Behind (2024); and an immersive planetarium experience Solar (2024). Alongside his work for stage and museums, he has composed for film and television, including for the BBC One series Silent Witness, numerous independent films, and album releases with Universal and APM music libraries. Thomas is also director of Chalkstream Productions, through which he develops music for screen, live performance, and installation.
Estera Jaros joins us as Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow. Her project adopts a decolonial and environmentalist perspective on Hawaiian hula to examine how the practice strengthens practitioners’ connection with nature and spirituality, fostering personal and social transformation and supporting holistic wellbeing. During the fellowship, Estera is based at Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of California Riverside, conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Southern California and Hawai‘i. Estera earned a PhD in Ethnomusicology at King’s College London, with a thesis exploring the intersections of dance, gender, sexuality, and spirituality in Afro-Brazilian samba from the Recôncavo region of Bahia, Brazil. Estera also holds an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Sheffield and BA degrees in Philosophy and English Philology from the University of Warsaw.
Wayne Weaver joins us as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. Wayne is a historian of early modern Atlantic sound and culture, and an alumnus of Cambridge University, where he read for a PhD in music under the supervision of Professor Benjamin Walton. Wayne’s doctoral thesis explored the life and creative outputs of the Anglo-Jamaican organist Samuel Felsted (1743-1802), observing how his musicking (and that of Kingston’s European-origin minority) contributed to the construction of a racialised white-Creole identity. His ongoing research at Royal Holloway will focus on the sonic and social cultures of Kingston’s black community, highlighting the roles played by black women in early accounts of African Jamaican street pageantry. In addition to his research, Wayne specialises in early keyboard and choral performance and has been awarded the Associate Diploma of the Royal College of Organists. Being an active musician engaged in genres ranging from the Renaissance to the modern day, Wayne is interested in how today’s social and political dynamics shape access to music education and will be involved in a variety of university teaching.
