Professor Richard Widdess FBA

Richard Widdess is Professor of Musicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He holds a PhD in Music from the University of Cambridge, and was Research Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at Christ's College, Cambridge. He has been Chair of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology; a founder editor of the British Journal of Ethnomusicology; committee member of the Indian Musicological Society; member of the QAA Subject Benchmarking Group for Music; co-organizer of the Institute of Musical Research South Asia Forum; and Head of the Department of Music, SOAS. He received the Music Forum (Mumbai) Award for contributions to Indian Music (2006). His research interests include the history and theory of music in India, especially with reference to modal concepts and the practice of vocal music; the ethnography of religious music, with reference to the temple singing traditions of Nepal; the analysis of musical performance in orally-transmitted traditions; and aspects of musical cognition and music's language relationships.