The Dent Medal 2026 is awarded to David R. M. Irving, who is an ICREA Research Professor at the Institució Milà i Fontanals de Recerca en Humanitats, CSIC, in Barcelona.  Irving studied at Griffith University, the University of Queensland, and the University of Cambridge (PhD 2007). He subsequently took up post-doctoral positions at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and King’s College London, then taught at the University of Nottingham, the Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne, and has held his current post since 2019.

Irving has made major contributions to the study of music and colonialism, the global history of music, and the role of music in early modern intercultural contact.  His first, ground-breaking monograph, Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila (Oxford University Press, 2010) concerns the development of Iberian-influenced musical culture in South-East Asia with a particular focus on the Philippines, in which he proposed the theory that musical counterpoint acted as a powerful agent of colonialism.  This book established him as one of the most innovative and important voices in the emerging field of global music history, for which he has developed new conceptual frameworks, including establishing a difference between ‘world music history’ and ‘global music history’ which has since become ubiquitous.  His re-evaluations of the colonial history of European music found important expression in his second monograph, The Making of European Music in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2024), which has been widely admired within and beyond musicology.

Irving has also made important contributions to the history of the early music movement, with a particular focus on its global dimensions, and is a professional Baroque violinist, who has worked with early music groups including The Early Opera Company, the Gabrieli Consort & Players, The Hanover Band, La Serenissima, Le Concert Lorrain, St James’s Baroque Players, Accademia Arcadia, Melbourne Baroque Orchestra, and Genesis Baroque.  He has contributed assiduously to the international musicological community, including as co-editor of the journal Eighteenth-Century Music (Cambridge University Press), co-general editor with Alexander Rehding of A Cultural History of Western Music (Bloomsbury Academic) and co-editor with Estelle Joubert of the volume A Cultural History of Western Music in the Age of Enlightenment.  He currently chairs the International Musicological Society’s Study Group ‘Global History of Music’.  Previous awards for his work include the Jerome Roche Prize (Royal Musical Association) and the McCredie Musicological Award (Australian Academy of the Humanities).