Alanna Ropchock Tierno currently teaches music history at Shenandoah University (Virginia, U.S.A) and received her PhD. in musicology from Case Western Reserve University, where she was awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct dissertation research in Germany on early Lutheran music. She was also the recipient of a postdoctoral fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel for research on her forthcoming monograph about the polyphonic Mass Ordinary in the early Lutheran liturgy. Due to her performance backgound as an organist and church musician, her research specialty is Christian liturgical music, with specific interests in Central Europe, confessional identity, gender studies, and popular music studies. Her work has been published in Early Music History, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, Notes, and Nota Bene.