Dr Alex Timewell

Profile

A passionate musician and educationalist, I am a highly experienced academic in the realm of music education working and teaching across the broad spectrum of disciplines where music intersects with the creative industries.

Previous to working at the University of Leeds I was Programme Leader: Business at Leeds Conservatoire (formally Leeds College of Music) for eight years, responsible for the design and delivery of the BA (Hons) Music Business and the Professional Studies strand across their entire suite of music programmes. This involved managing a large team of lecturers and responsibility for the quality of learning experience for around one and a half thousand students each year. Initially I lectured for sixteen years in Music Performance and Production at The Manchester College. 

I am an active performer with over thirty years’ experience working in the music industry and a professional electric bass guitarist.

Responsibilities

• Programme Leader for MA Culture, Creativity and Enterprise

Research interests

I have a passion for the arts and believe in their fundamental role in society. I am active in working towards building education systems that are inclusive in terms of socioeconomic status, cultural background and personal ability. The challenges of promoting such a discourse within contemporary civilisation is not easy. Providing frameworks for a consistent, holistic and globally aware education system requires a thoughtful, compassionate and assertive perspective on the importance of the study of culture and training of creative people.

I am a music educator that wishes to move toward a model that is inclusive, equitable, diverse, and culturally responsive, understanding the broader context of the creative and cultural industries in which music sits, engage with the high/low culture dichotomy that is fundamental to the popular music field and understand the dialectic of commerce and art.

My current research considers how music business education propagates from each of these layers of desire for an inclusive education, teaching about culturally diverse art forms existing in commercialised industries. There is a need to understand how curriculum is formed in standalone music business programmes, is added to other music programmes through an employability agenda and contributes to wider arts and cultural education.

My doctoral research initiated and continues to precipitate a desire to contribute to the field of arts education theory by examining how Lacanian psychoanalysis can bring insights to changing student identities in an evolving digital landscape and competing multicultural discourses. Central to this is laying out a case for a framework that accounts for diverse thinking, embracing a parametric ontology that supports an agenda for and inclusive post-colonial education. 

Qualifications

• 2016 PhD, ‘Thinking Frames in Popular Music Education: Musical Objects and Identity in Rehearsal’
• 2008 Master of Research: Education and Society, Institute of Education, MMU
• 2005 Post Graduate Certificate in Post Compulsory Education and Training. University of Huddersfield
• 1999 BA (Hons) Popular Music and Recording. University of Salford