Andrew Hugill joins the School of Music as Visiting Research Professor

The School of Music is delighted to appoint Professor Andrew Hugill as Visiting Research Professor.

Andrew’s academic career has included posts as Professor of Music (De Montfort University), Professor of Creative Computing (Bath Spa University) and Deputy Director of the Institute for Digital Culture (University of Leicester). He is also a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a National Teacher Fellow.

Andrew has a long history of contributing to the discipline of music. Primarily a composer, Andrew is probably best known for works such as Island Symphony and a collection of post-minimalist compositions for the ensemble ‘George W. Welch’. Recent works include pieces for aurally diverse people such as Spectrum Sounds and the innovative Digital Syzygies which used EEG devices to enable autistic people to make music with their brains. He has a longstanding project entitled The Orchestra: A User’s Manual’, which gets c. 20,000 unique visits per month.

Andrew’s research on French composer Erik Satie has just been released for publication by the Royal Musical Association, and he has published books and articles on aspects of French literature and culture, especially pataphysics. He has recently been commissioned by the Percy Grainger Society to work with them on developing the Grainger Library of Sampled Sounds (a collection of sounds from his home in White Plains, New York) into a unique resource aimed at neurodivergent people. 

Andrew’s research is very interdisciplinary, as evidenced by a recent special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, which he edited. His book The Digital Musician, now in its third edition, is a standard text on most Music Technology programmes and is currently being translated into Chinese. Andrew is Principal Investigator on the interdisciplinary Aural Diversity project which brings together researchers and practitioners to investigate hearing differences in disciplines such as Music and Sound Studies, Acoustics and Engineering, Hearing Sciences and Audiology, Architecture and Design, Literature and History, Psychology and Neuroscience. He recently co-edited a book on Aural Diversity.

Andrew has extensive experience in creative computing and digital culture, and recently has been involved in the strategic direction of Leicester’s new Research Institute for Digital Culture. There is strong potential for links with the institution’s Digital Creativity & Cultures Hub, and the School of Computer Science for continuing initiatives. 

Andrew will be giving a public lecture later in the year - watch out for details in due course!