Dr Matthew Williams
Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Matthew Williams studied for his PhD in musicology at the University of Bristol as an award-holder of University of Bristol Alumni Funding. 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 in pop and gospel music. Matthew’s performance career strongly 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 on 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 related to his thesis topic.

Research

Overview

  • Popular music 
  • Theology and Musical Borrowing
  • Music of the Black Atlantic
  • Semiotics and Music’s Meanings
  • Secularisation
  • Intertextuality

Matthew welcomes enquiries from PhD candidates interested in any of these research areas.

Publications

Selected publications

Books and reviews

  • Book review: ‘The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre and Vocality. By Nina Sun Eidsheim’.In Popular Music, Cambridge University Press 40(3-4): 538-540. (2022)
  • Book chapter: ‘The Interplay of Sacred and Secular within Gospel Music Performance’ in Black British Gospel Music from the Windrush Generation to Black Lives Matter. Edited by Monique Ingalls, Dulcie Dixon-McKenzie and Pauline Muir. London: Routledge Press. (forthcoming, 2023).

Conference Papers and Conference Organisation

  • Organisation of Black British Music: Sacred and Secular Study Day (forthcoming March 2023) University of Bristol. Co-organised with Justin Williams, Monique Ingalls and Natalie Hyacinth
  • Organisation of Amazing Grace - Legacies at 250 Conference(July 2022) Hosted by the Open University at the Cowper and Newton Museum, Olney. Co-organized with Martin Clarke, Nancy Cho and Gareth Atkins
  • ‘Stormzy and the Evocation of the Transcendent’ Spirituality and Genre Study Day (May 2022) Middlesex University, London
  • ‘Stormzy and the Re-enchantment of our Secular Age’ North American British Music Studies Association Conference(July 2022) Illinois State University, USA
  • ‘Secularisation and Gospel Codes’ Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives Conference (2021)Ripon College, University of Oxford, UK
  • Co-hosted ‘Postgraduates Knowledge Sharing Session’ Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives Conference (2021)Ripon College, University of Oxford, UK
  • ‘Sonic Resistance and the Sound of Black British Gospel’ Does Black Christian Music Matter? Conference (2020)Centre for Black Theology, Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, UK
  • ‘The Legacy of the Windrush Generation in Black British Music’ Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives (2019)Ripon College, University of Oxford, UK

Teaching

Undergraduate

  • BA Critical Thinking and Listening

Postgraduate

  • MA Music: musicology pathway