Matthew Williams studied for his PhD in musicology at the University of Bristol. His thesis was titled: Sacred-Secular, Gospel-Pop Crossovers. Matthew is especially interested in the field of popular music and religion, specifically utilising Peircean semiotic theory to study meaning-making in music. Matthew’s performance career informs his research, having toured several countries professionally.
Matthew worked as a secondary school music teacher for ten years. During the same period, he undertook an MA in Music (passed with distinction) and studied for his PhD.
He has been an external tutor in music at the University of Oxford and has also worked as an assistant tutor at the University of Bristol. He has taught a variety of undergraduate and MA courses and modules, including musicology, African American Music, Intertextuality and MA Black Humanities course.
He has a chapter on gospel-pop crossovers under contract with Routledge Press in a book entitled Black British Gospel Music from the Windrush Generation to Black Lives Matter, edited by Monique Ingalls, Dulcie Dixon-McKenzie and Pauline Muir.
He is currently working on a monograph (under contract with Oxford University Press) titled Gospel-Pop Crossovers: Secularisation and the Sacred.
Undergraduate Admissions Tutor
Future Voices Scholarship Mentor
Matthew welcomes enquiries from PhD candidates interested in any of these research areas.