Engagement
These Engagement pages deal principally with my ongoing activities beyond academia, the methods I use to achieve things and the beneficiaries that are the result.
My activities have never stopped at the university gates. Ideas and experiences developed through research, teaching and creative work have repeatedly taken me into public policy, healthcare, professional practice, cultural organisations, community activity, broadcasting, disability advocacy and other parts of public life. One moment I might be contributing to government thinking about autism; another advising acousticians about hearing difference. I might be discussing sensory accessibility in a railway station, helping a museum rethink sensory experience, talking about vertigo on the BBC or making 147 tiny frog compositions.
During my academic career I taught Music and Creative Computing to 38 generations of undergraduates and supervised hundreds of Masters and PhD students. I was made a National Teaching Fellow in 2006.
“His distinctive style of teaching was such an inspiration. He really opened musical doors for me … He taught me how to think outside the box.”
Former student
“His teaching has inspired and introduced me to new sound worlds and given me a chance to explore them through my own creativity. To challenge my ideas and processes in order to develop myself as a musician and composer.”
Former student
I have also spent a great deal of time supporting other people's work and careers. By the time I was made a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2017 I had documented contributions to the careers of 53 academics. The number is now more than 70, with at least a dozen of those people now full Professors. That kind of mentorship, whether formal or informal, has been one of the most rewarding parts of academic life.
Research has taken me across music, technology, digital culture, listening, disability and neurodivergence. I have led and contributed to projects attracting several million pounds in funding, served on research and scientific committees in the UK and internationally, and advised and assessed work across many fields.
I have also repeatedly turned ideas into structures. I founded Music, Technology and Innovation and the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, established Creative Computing at Bath Spa University and developed it at the University of Leicester, and co-founded Leicester's Institute for Digital Culture. These were not simply administrative entities: they involved new curricula, research communities, studios, laboratories and other spaces in which people could work. I remain active as a Visiting Research Professor in the School of Music at the University of Leeds.
It is these experiences that have informed my wider engagement.