Giorgio BIANCOROSSO (Associate Professor) studied music history and film studies at the University of Rome and King's College, London, before moving to Princeton University, where he obtained a Ph.D. in musicology in 2002. Having taught at Northwestern University in 2000-01, in 2001-2003 he was a Mellon Fellow in Music at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Music Department at Columbia in 2003-04. Biancorosso is currently completing a book entitled Musical Aesthetics Through Cinema (under contract with Oxford University Press). He has published in the areas of film and musical aesthetics for the journals ECHO, Music and the Moving Image, AAA/TAC, Music & Letters, and Current Musicology, and has contributed essays to the volumes Bad Music (Routledge, 2004), Il melodramma (Bulzoni, 2007), The Routledge Companion to Film and Philosophy (2009), Wagner and Cinema (Indiana, 2010), and Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image (Hong Kong, 2010). Aside from film music, film criticism, and musical aesthetics, his interests include musical dramaturgy and the psychology of music. Biancorosso is the Review Editor of Musica Humana and a member of the Programme Committee of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. In recognition of his work, HKU awarded him the Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2009.

CHAN Hing-yan (Associate Professor and Chairperson) received his D.M.A. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, majoring in composition and minoring in ethnomusicology. As a composer, he has represented Hong Kong on different occasions, including International Society for Contemporary Music Festival (2007), Hong Kong Sinfonietta's European Tour (2005), the recent performance of his Madame Cadavre in the Year of China in France by l'Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and John Nelson (2004), UNESCO's International Rostrum of Composers (2000 & 2003), and the Conference and Festival of the Asian Composers League (1998). Chan's diverse output, which includes solo, chamber, choral, and orchestral, often subtly incorporates Chinese elements. More than half of Chan's compositions are written for a mixed ensemble consisting of Chinese and Western instruments. His works have been heard around the world in Europe, North and South America, China, and Southeast Asia at festivals such as Shanghai Spring International Music Festival (2007), Hommage a Bartók, Budapest (2006), Les Flâneries Musicales d'Eté de Reims (2005), Pazaislis Festival, Kaunas (2005), Beijing Modern Festival (2004), Festival Internacional Encuentros in Buenos Aires (2004), International Gaudeamus Music Week in Amsterdam (2003), Melbourne Festival (2002), Singapore Arts Festival (2002 & 2006), Budapest Music Week (2001), Musica Nova Festival in Estonia (2001), and Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music (2001). Chan's recent collaborations with the City Contemporary Dance Company have won him much acclaim as well as a Hong Kong Dance Award (2008).

Joshua CHAN (Associate Professor), Ph.D. (HKU), has written more than 150 compositions and arrangements, in diversified styles, for various media including orchestral, electronic, chamber, vocal, theatre, ballet, and pop recording. International events in which Chan's work were featured include: UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers (1988, 1993, 2002, 2005); ISCM World Music Days (1995 & 2002); International Computer Music Conference (1993); Asian Composers' League Conference New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Concert (1992); Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra Concert (1998); ballet performances by the London Studio Centre in seven cities in UK (2002); the First Chinese Composers Festival (1986); Hong Kong Arts Festival (1984, 1994, 1998-2001); New Zealand International Arts Festival (2004); Singapore Chinese Orchestra Session Concert (2001); the Fifth Asia-Pacific Harmonica Festival (2004); Musicarama Festivals (1992-2006); the Fifth Osaka International Chamber Music Festa (2005), etc. Chan's works have been published on 10 compact discs of 7 different labels. Chan also serves the community as a Council Member of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Chairman of the Hong Kong Composers' Guild, the Chairman of the Asian Composers League, a Member of the Programme and Development Committee for the Leisure and Cultural Services Department's cultural programmes, and the Chairman of the CDC-HKEAA Committee on Music Curriculum (Senior Secondary of the new 3+3+4 academic system). Chan was commended by the HKSAR Government in the Secretary for Home Affairs' Commendation Scheme 2007 for the Persons with Outstanding Contributions to the Development of Arts and Culture.

Daniel CHUA (Professor and Head of the School of Humanities) studied music at Cambridge University, as an undergraduate at St. Catharine's College, then as a graduate at St. John's College, where he worked on a music analytical thesis entitled The "Galitzin" Quartets of Beethoven (published by Princeton in 1995). After a year as a Henry Fellow at Harvard, he returned to St. John's as a Research Fellow and later became the Director of Studies in Music there. During this time he worked on his second, more historically orientated, book, Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (published by Cambridge in 1999). Before joining The University of Hong Kong as Head of the School of Humanities and Professor of Music, he was the Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at King's College London. In recognition of his work, he was awarded the Royal Musical Association Dent Medal in 2004. Although mostly known as a Beethoven scholar, Chua's research is diverse, ranging from Monteverdi to Stravinsky. It is, however, consistent in as much as it focuses on music's social and ideological meaning. To elicit these meanings, his work combines music analysis and music history with theories from other disciplines (literary theory, critical theory, continental philosophy, history of science, etc.). He is currently working on the ethics of freedom in the music of Beethoven. He is also an editor of Music & Letters.

Selected Publications

Nirmali FENN (Research Scholar) joined The University of Hong Kong as the first music scholar of the Society of Scholars in the Humanities after completing a doctorate in music composition at the University of Oxford in 2010. Prior to this, she graduated with the highest honours at the University of New South Wales and the University of Melbourne in Australia. Her music has been performed all over the world by some of the leading contemporary music ensembles, including the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Cairn, Kuss Quartet, Ensemble Linea, Tin Alley String Quartet, Sounds Underground, Endymion Ensemble, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. She has also been involved in numerous festivals, taking up appointments as Composer in Residence for the Saxophone Habanera Festival in Poitiers, France, and the Lake District Summer Music Festival, UK. Her music is published by Edition HH.

Youn KIM (Assistant Professor) obtained her Ph.D. from Columbia University and taught at Seoul National University prior to joining HKU in 2007. Her research interests include the history of Western music theory, music cognition, theory and analysis, history of listening, and in particular, the interrelationship between music theory and the science of the mind. Kim is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Convergence and/or Dialogue: Music Theory and Psychology in Fin-de-Siècle Germany, which examines selected writings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This research is supported by the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong under the General Research Fund for 2011/2012. Her previous publications include a monograph, History of Western Music Theory (2006; selected as "Outstanding Books in the Field of Basic Sciences" in 2008 by The National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Korea), and a number of articles and reviews in Music and Letters, Journal of the Musicological Society of Korea, and Current Musicology, amongst others. She has presented papers at various international conferences, including Royal Musical Association, International Musicological Society, Congress of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie, and International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition. Currently, Kim is serving as the editor of Musica Humana, an international musicological journal based in East Asia.

Selected Publications

Chih-Chieh LIU (Post-doctoral Fellow) received her Ph.D. in the Department of Dance, Film and Theatre from the University of Surrey, U.K. with a thesis entitled "Corporeal Pun: Translations of the Dancing Body in Taiwanese Popular Culture" (2011). Trained across different academic fields, including anthropology, history (B.A. dual hons, National Taiwan University), and children's literature (M.A., University of Reading), her research focus lies in the nexus between translation and corporeality in the Asian popular cultural field. She has a particular interest in exploring new technologies of communication emerging from, yet not limited to, online youth (sub)cultures and diasporic groups, with specific attention on the (re)production of the body, issues on parody and imitation, and the processes of (mis)translation. She has presented at various international conferences, and is a member of the American-based Society of Dance History Scholars as well as the reporting secretary of the London-based Society for Dance Research. She is currently writing for two forthcoming anthologies, Popular Dance and Music Matters (Ashgate) and Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen (Oxford University Press).

Deborah WAUGH (Teaching Associate) has performing diplomas from the Victorian College of the Arts, a Master of Music from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from The University of Hong Kong. She worked for many years as a casual percussionist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, as well as performing ballet, opera, theatre, chamber, and contemporary music in Australia. She was a member of the Aradia Baroque Ensemble in Toronto, and performed with the Canadian world music ensemble, Musaïc, at Expo '98 in Lisbon. In addition to performing, she has taught music at a variety of educational institutions in Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong.

YANG Yuanzheng (Assistant Professor) completed his master's and doctoral degrees in musicology at The University of Hong Kong, where he produced two highly-acclaimed theses, "Early Qin Music: Manuscript Tokyo, Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan TB1393 and Manuscript Hikone, Hikone-jo, Hakubutsukan V633" (2005), and "Japonifying the Qin: The Appropriation of Chinese Qin Music in Tokugawa Japan" (2008). In recognition of his work, Yang was awarded a Li Ka Shing Prize (2003-2005) from The University of Hong Kong and a Ford Foundation Fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council in New York City (2006). In 2006/07, Yang was inducted into the "Tang Music Project" and held research appointments at Princeton University and Utrecht University. Yang's research extends from the seventh century to the present day, and focuses on issues of national and cultural identity in both Chinese and Japanese music. He has published in Music Research, Journal of the Musicological Society of Japan, and Palace Museum Journal, amongst others. Invited by the Smithsonian Institution, Yang is currently completing an archaeological report on a Chinese musical instrument housed at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington D.C. Yang is the English editor of Chinese Annals of Music. In addition to his musical endeavours, Yang also holds a degree in mechanics and engineering from Peking University.

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