Recent PhD alumnus at Royal Holloway, Dr James Helgeson, has been appointed as the new Dean of the world-famous Barenboim-Said Akademie, starting Winter Semester 2024/25.
Prof. James Helgeson
On the appointment, Dr Helgeson says, “The Academy is an extraordinary and necessary place and I’m looking forward to the honour of working with all of you”.
About James Helgeson
Professor Dr. Dr. James S. Helgeson is a composer and specialist of the Renaissance, working at the intersections of music, literature, and philosophy. Prior to his appointment to Professor and Dean at the Barenboim-Said Akademie, he held positions as an Associate Professor at Columbia University in New York City, and as a Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge. He also taught at Princeton University and the University of Nottingham. Helgeson‘s first degree is from the Curtis Institute of Music. This was followed by a BA at Oberlin College/Conservatory. In Paris, he studied at the Ecole normale supérieure (rue d’Ulm) and the Université de Paris-VII. He holds two doctorates, in humanities and music, reflecting the Barenboim-Said Akademie’s scope of studies. His first PhD is from Princeton University, where he examined Renaissance theories of music and poetry. He was awarded a second doctorate in Music Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has received grants and visiting fellowships, such as an International Balzan Prize Lecturership, a visiting research residency at St John’s College Oxford, and currently serves as a member of the board of the Société Française d'Étude du Seizième Siècle.
Helgeson is the author of two monographs in French Renaissance studies, an edited volume, and numerous articles. Interrelationships between the arts, in particular music and literature in the period before 1600 and since the Second World War, are at the crux of Prof. Helgeson’s past and current research. His work focuses on musical humanism in the French Renaissance as well as first-person writing (prose and music) and the fictional representation of philosophical reflection. He also has a strong interest in critical theory––its institutional cultures, assumptions, and exclusions––and in questions of historical hermeneutics. This field includes post-colonial reflections on hegemony and canonicity in hermeneutic practice, subjects that have been central to the Barenboim-Said Akademie’s mission.
What is the Barenboim-Said Akademie?
Since 2015, talented young musicians from the Middle East, Northern Africa, and other countries have been studying at the Barenboim-Said Akademie, an institution of higher music education in Berlin founded by Daniel Barenboim. The Akademie’s four-year bachelor programme includes a stronger focus on the humanities and musicology than is common in professional music education; a new master programme was launched with the beginning of the 2024 summer semester. The Barenboim-Said Akademie’s central idea is expressed in a spirit of inclusion and diversity: through playing and listening, students learn to accept differences, to engage in discussion with an open mind and an open heart, and to discover the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment. The Akademie, which shares its building with the Pierre Boulez Saal, is dedicated to the pedagogical spirit of Edward W. Said and Daniel Barenboim, which tries to overcome ideological trenches.
