Matthew Sergeant
I attended the University of Huddersfield from 2011-13, to complete my PhD in music composition with a thesis entitled ‘Erosion and Encrustation as Transformative Musical Processes’. I was based within the then School of Music, Humanities, and Media and, more specifically, within the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM).
I chose to study here because the University of Huddersfield has – and continues to have - a long and established international reputation for new music research, spearheaded by CeReNeM and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Being part of the community of scholars and artists that have arisen around this pioneering work was the essential draw to study at this university.
My PhD study at the University of Huddersfield was hugely transformative. The environment within CeReNeM was extremely supportive, whilst being insistently intellectually rigorous and artistically daring. During my time at the institution, I was encouraged to upset and invigorate my artistic practice and to build new contextual infrastructures within to situate my work. My work and research changed drastically, equipping me with lasting and important research trajectories with which to continue my artistic investigation.
Since graduating, I have perused a career within academia, joining Bath Spa University in 2017 as Senior Lecturer in Music, before being promoted to Reader in 2020. My artistic practice has continued to grow, with important ongoing collaborations with the ELISION Ensemble (an ensemble who I first came into contact with at the University of Huddersfield), as well as recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, amongst many other projects.
My time at the university was intense, supportive and transformative.