The SMI was founded in acknowledgement of the immense increase in musical scholarship on the island of Ireland since the early 1990s. While a number of the founding members had previously been members of the
Royal Musical Association (RMA) (United Kingdom), the dynamic growth of the field in Ireland (including Northern Ireland) has led to the inauguration of an independent society with friendly links to the RMA. The SMI's constitution describes the main object of the society as "the advancement of education, specifically in the field of musicology, and to promote and foster musical scholarship in all its forms throughout Ireland, north and south by organizing annual conferences, generating publications, and maintaining a website which contains relevant expert resources which are freely and publicly available". The society organises an annual plenary conference, usually around June, an annual postgraduate plenary conference in January that is held in conjunction with the Irish national committee of the
International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance as well as a number of associated events per year on varying topics on the initiative of music departments around the country. Members and other scholars publish their research in the peer-reviewed
Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (JSMI) and the book series
Irish Musical Studies. The society has a strong working relationship with the Research Foundation for Music in Ireland (RFMI), maintained by the TU Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama and which, since 2012, houses the SMI Library. Furthermore, the SMI represents the Irish committee for
RILM (through the RFMI),
RISM and
IAML.
Presidents •
Harry White (University College Dublin), 2003–2006 • Jan Smaczny (Queen's University Belfast), 2006–2012 • Kerry Houston (TU Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama), 2012–2015 • Lorraine Byrne Bodley (Maynooth University), 2015–2021 • John O'Flynn (Dublin City University), 2021–2024 • Wolfgang Marx (University College Dublin), 2024- ==Research Ireland Harrison Medal==