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Gavin Williams

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

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.

    Picture a day like this thumb

    New season for King's music colloquium

    The weekly series held by the Department of Music returns - representing contemporary research within music.

    pawel-czerwinski-sxaYEsE12RM-unsplash

    Events

    22NovChoir Music

    Turning Sideways in Musical Spacetime

    Join us for a talk with Roger Moseley - 22 November

    Please note: this event has passed.

    06Decmusic-ballroom

    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.

    15NovMoore, Phemius and Telemachus, 1944. Henry Moore Foundation 2

    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.

    11MayCritical Perspectives on Petrosonics: A Study Day

    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.

    01MarCinema Header

    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.

    15FebBallett theatre

    (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.

    08Feb1933 music header

    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.

    01FebDigital Art Header

    (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.

    25JanBrain Music BBC

    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.

    18JanOpera thumbnail

    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.

      Picture a day like this thumb

      New season for King's music colloquium

      The weekly series held by the Department of Music returns - representing contemporary research within music.

      pawel-czerwinski-sxaYEsE12RM-unsplash

      Events

      22NovChoir Music

      Turning Sideways in Musical Spacetime

      Join us for a talk with Roger Moseley - 22 November

      Please note: this event has passed.

      06Decmusic-ballroom

      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.

      15NovMoore, Phemius and Telemachus, 1944. Henry Moore Foundation 2

      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.

      11MayCritical Perspectives on Petrosonics: A Study Day

      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.

      01MarCinema Header

      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.

      15FebBallett theatre

      (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.

      08Feb1933 music header

      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.

      01FebDigital Art Header

      (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.

      25JanBrain Music BBC

      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.

      18JanOpera thumbnail

      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.