'Professor Roger Covell completed his doctoral studies in early baroque opera. He has edited and arranged the earliest Australian musical play, Edward Geoghegan's The Currency Lass (Sydney, Currency, 1976). He is the Founding Head of the School of Music and Music Education, and his activities include choral and operatic conducting, composing and arranging, musical direction of University of New South Wales Opera, co-founding the Australia Ensemble resident at UNSW and the publication of ongoing research in opera, baroque music and Australian music. Former National President of both the Musicological Society of Australia and the Australian Society for Music Education, he also writes as chief music critic of The Sydney Morning Herald, an activity that earned him the Geraldine Pascal Prize.' (The Australian Academy of the Humanities website)