Ita Beausang  Ita Margaret Beausang (née Hogan) (born 18 October 1936) is an Irish musicologist and educator. In 1962 she completed the first PhD thesis in musicology to have been written in Ireland. She specialises in Irish music of the Classical period, and in female Irish composers. Beausang was born in Cork and studied with Aloys Fleischmann at University College Cork, graduating as BMus (1956) and MA (1958) before she completed the first Irish PhD thesis in musicology on "Anglo-Irish Music, 1780–1830" (1962). With some adaptations, this was the basis of her book "Anglo-Irish Music, 1780–1830" (Cork University Press, 1966; published under her maiden name Ita Margaret Hogan). From 1954 to 1960, she taught at the Cork School of Music. After her marriage and move to Dublin in 1960, she worked as a research assistant on the Royal Irish Academy's "A New History of Ireland" (Oxford University Press), again working with Fleischmann, during 1973–1974. In 1986, she was appointed lecturer in musicianship at the then College of Music (now the TU Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama) and served as acting director, 1995–1996. She retired in 2001 and has since played an active role in fostering music education in Ireland, serving on the advisory group for a feasibility study, undertaken by the organisation Music Network, on "A National System of Local Music Education Services" (2001–2003). She was also a member of the executive committee of the Feis Ceoil (2003–2009). In 2010, Beausang was awarded Honorary Membership of the Society for Musicology in Ireland. She was also awarded Honorary Life Membership of the Society for Music Education in Ireland in 2014. Under her maiden surname Hogan, Ita Beausang has published work on musical culture in late 18th and 19th-century Ireland, culminating in her volume "Anglo-Irish Music, 1780–1830". For a long time, this study remained the only substantial text about Irish composers of a mainly Protestant background, including Charles Thomas Carter, Philip Cogan, Thomas Simpson Cooke, John Field, Michael Kelly, John Andrew Stevenson and others. The book "is recognised as a seminal text on the subject". Barra Ó Seaghdha wrote in 2016 that "the book allows later readers and scholars to pick and choose the material that suits their own purposes, or to weave it into patterns of their own, regardless of the author's views".