Christopher Haworth is a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Music and Digitisation Research Group. Working with Georgina Born, he is examining changes to the boundary between 'art' and 'popular' musics in UK electronic music genres, and the way this is being mediated by increased exchange between academic and non-academic communities. A central question concerns the concept of 'avant-garde' in relation to these changes. He is researching the varied ways in which connections to earlier avant-gardes ('historical' or 'neo') are established in contemporary genres, alongside new claims to avant-garde status made by practitioners and critics.
Previous work has traced the various ways that aesthetics, perception, technology and genealogy become entwined in 20th and 21st century art and research. Christopher has published on such topics as the legacy of Iannis Xenakis' late electroacoustic music (Computer Music Journal), 'Extreme' Computer Music and Noise (Resonances: Noise and Music, Bloomsbury Press), and the history and practice of composing with 'auditory distortion products' (Leonardo Music Journal). Before joining the MusDig group, Christopher held research positions at McGill University, as an ICASP postdoctoral fellow; and at University of Calgary, as a postdoctoral scholar and lecturer in network arts. He studied fine art at Chelsea College of Art (BA), music at Goldsmiths University (MMus), and completed his Ph.D. at Queen's University Belfast.
