Musicologist

I have taught musicology, music history, aesthetics, cultural theory, philosophy and psychology at Newcastle University in northern England (2002-22) and the University of Hong Kong (1997-2001). Over the past decade I’ve taught seminars at Jungian institutes, integrating these approaches for adult students.

I received my PhD from UCLA, and was a guest professor there in 2001; I have a diploma in Jungian analysis from the C. G. Jung-Institut in Zürich. I’ve lived and worked on four continents, where I’ve been involved in many academic and creative projects and events; I’ve also been involved in HIV programs and events for more than forty years, including co-writing and acting in an early play about AIDS and fifteen years running a patient support/education group.

I’ve lived and worked on four continents, where I’ve been involved in many academic and creative projects and events; I’ve also been involved in HIV programs and events for more than forty years, including co-writing and acting in an early play and fifteen years running a patient support/education group.

I have published in a number of essay collections, journals, and reference works, and have also published a lot of journalism and creative pieces. One of my first academic publications was in the ground-breaking Queering the Pitch: The New Lesbian & Gay Musicology in 1994 – it pulled me into an international world of music, queer studies, and unusual ways of thinking. I’ve written about contemporary musics, notably experimental musics of the 1950s and 1960s, and the 1980s, especially opera and performance art; about music and culture and psychology as they relate to HIV/AIDS; and across a range of psychological and philosophical topics.

I’m currently working on several book projects – I don’t know if I will finish them but I’m enjoying the work. One is a commissioned shorter book on cultural complexes around HIV/AIDS and politics; I also hope to return to a larger project about all the cultural complexes related to HIV/AIDS, not just the political ones. I’m also working on a project that may come into being in late 2028 on transcendence and music, but from a different angle – thus, not transcendence as it appears in specific religious or existential contexts, but a wide range of things that we may call transcendent as they appear in musical works, and the psychological patterns that they suggest. I’m finding it exciting work….