
Dr Gavin Williams
Lecturer in Music
Biography
I completed my PhD in music at Harvard University in 2013 with a dissertation entitled 'Arts of Noise: Sound and Media in Milan ca. 1900'. Since then I have held a variety of appointments researching and teaching music and environmental humanities: at the University of Cambridge (Research Fellow, 2013-19), King's College London (Leverhulme ECR, 2016-19), the University of California, Berkeley (Lecturer, 2019-2021) and Cardiff University (Research Associate, 2023).
Research Interests
- 19th- and 20th-century music
- Music and the Environment
- Sound Studies
- Energy Humanities
I work on the history of listening in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My book, Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc (University of Chicago Press, July 2024), explores the materiality of listening to recorded music from global and environmental perspectives during the first half of the twentieth century. I have published articles and essays on Italian Futurism, popular music in London and Milan, and I edited the book Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense (Oxford University Press, 2019), which won the Royal Musical Association/Cambridge University Press Edited Volume Book Award in 2020. More recently, my research has focussed on sound and the environment, having co-organized with Annette Davison and Laudan Nooshin a conference on Petrosonics which took place at King's in May 2023. I helped establish, and also run, a research network on Welsh Energy Humanities.
Selected publications
- Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, July 2024)
- ‘Shellac as Musical Plastic’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 74/3 (2021), 463–500.
- ‘The Reproduction of Caruso,’ Cambridge Opera Journal 33/1-2 (2022), 161-179.
- Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense (Oxford University Press, 2019), winner of the Royal Musical Association/Cambridge University Press Prize for Outstanding Edited Collection 2020.
Teaching
I teach a range of courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, including nineteenth-century music, film music, music and digital culture, sonic urbanism, and music and the environment. I am always happy to talk to undergraduates about dissertation topics in related areas, so please feel free to be in touch. At the postgraduate level, I have taught courses related to my research into sound recording and the environment and research methodologies, together with a range of guest seminars in music, history and literary studies. I am also pursuing pedagogical research into collaboration with the Music Studies in/of the Anthropocene Research Network.
News
New season for King's music colloquium 23/24
The weekly series held by the Department of Music returns for the new academic year - representing contemporary research within music.

New season for King's music colloquium
The weekly series held by the Department of Music returns - representing contemporary research within music.

Events

Turning Sideways in Musical Spacetime
Join us for a talk with Roger Moseley - 22 November
Please note: this event has passed.

Exercises de Style: Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Queneau at the Cabaret
Join us for a talk with Mary Ann Smart - 06 December 2023
Please note: this event has passed.

Recovering The Rescue
We are delighted to welcome Charlotte de Mille to share new research on the wartime radio play, The Rescue (1943), a collaboration between Edward...
Please note: this event has passed.

Critical Perspectives on Petrosonics: A Study Day
This RMA- and BFE-supported study day aims to open up a space to discuss energy sonics.
Please note: this event has passed.

Listening at the Ends of Cinemagoing: The Cinema as A Quiet Place (2018-2022)
When the film A Quiet Place Part II was released, in May 2021, cinemas around the world had been empty for a long time. After months of closures due to...
Please note: this event has passed.

(Cancelled) Americans in London: Cultural Exchange and Transnational Identities in Ballet Theatre's 1946 Covent Garden Season
The music department is delighted host a presentation by Sophie Redfern, Lecturer in Music, King’s College London and the University of Nottingham, and...
Please note: this event has passed.

Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933
We are delighted to host a panel discussion of Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933 (Cambridge University...
Please note: this event has passed.

(Cancelled) The Dynamics of Pluralism in Contemporary Digital Art Music (TBC)
1 February Georgina Born The Dynamics of Pluralism in Contemporary Digital Art Music (TBC) 4.30pm, Saint Davids Room (SDR), Strand Campus All welcome! ...
Please note: this event has passed.

Speechless
The music department is delighted to welcome Professor Cat Hope, Professor of Composition at Monash University and Visiting Professor in the Department of...
Please note: this event has passed.

Opera down the line
The music department is delighted to begin the colloquium series for 2023 with talk by Flora Willson, Senior Lecturer in Music, King’s College London, who...
Please note: this event has passed.
News
New season for King's music colloquium 23/24
The weekly series held by the Department of Music returns for the new academic year - representing contemporary research within music.

New season for King's music colloquium
The weekly series held by the Department of Music returns - representing contemporary research within music.

Events

Turning Sideways in Musical Spacetime
Join us for a talk with Roger Moseley - 22 November
Please note: this event has passed.

Exercises de Style: Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Queneau at the Cabaret
Join us for a talk with Mary Ann Smart - 06 December 2023
Please note: this event has passed.

Recovering The Rescue
We are delighted to welcome Charlotte de Mille to share new research on the wartime radio play, The Rescue (1943), a collaboration between Edward...
Please note: this event has passed.

Critical Perspectives on Petrosonics: A Study Day
This RMA- and BFE-supported study day aims to open up a space to discuss energy sonics.
Please note: this event has passed.

Listening at the Ends of Cinemagoing: The Cinema as A Quiet Place (2018-2022)
When the film A Quiet Place Part II was released, in May 2021, cinemas around the world had been empty for a long time. After months of closures due to...
Please note: this event has passed.

(Cancelled) Americans in London: Cultural Exchange and Transnational Identities in Ballet Theatre's 1946 Covent Garden Season
The music department is delighted host a presentation by Sophie Redfern, Lecturer in Music, King’s College London and the University of Nottingham, and...
Please note: this event has passed.

Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933
We are delighted to host a panel discussion of Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933 (Cambridge University...
Please note: this event has passed.

(Cancelled) The Dynamics of Pluralism in Contemporary Digital Art Music (TBC)
1 February Georgina Born The Dynamics of Pluralism in Contemporary Digital Art Music (TBC) 4.30pm, Saint Davids Room (SDR), Strand Campus All welcome! ...
Please note: this event has passed.

Speechless
The music department is delighted to welcome Professor Cat Hope, Professor of Composition at Monash University and Visiting Professor in the Department of...
Please note: this event has passed.

Opera down the line
The music department is delighted to begin the colloquium series for 2023 with talk by Flora Willson, Senior Lecturer in Music, King’s College London, who...
Please note: this event has passed.