Gavin S. K. Lee (PhD Duke, MSt Oxford, BA KCL, PGCE NTU [SG]) is a multi-award winning, bimusical Senior Lecturer in Historical Musicology (Horizon Educator) at Sydney Conservatorium. He is one of 3 Australia-based winners of major academic prizes from the American Musicological Society (AMS) and Society for Music Theory (SMT): 2025 AMS Philip Brett award, 2025 AMS Teaching Award, and 2024 SMT edited book award.
Keynoter for the Musicological Society of Australia 2023 conference, he is author of 6 Q1 journal articles and 6 articles in prestigious flagship journals of US/UK academic societies, and editor of 4 collections. In addition to serving as former editor of the International Musicological Society’s publication Musicological Brainfood, he was appointed as a member of the editorial boards of Journal of the American Musicological Society, Indiana Theory Review and Gender Equity, Society for Ethnomusicology Council, and Society for Ethnomusicology 2023 conference program committee. Since 2020, Lee has presented 19 guest lectures in the US, UK, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, including 3 guest lectures at top 50 global universities (Oxford, King's College London, University of Melbourne). He has collaborated with around 200 researchers in editing publications and convening conference panels.
Lee's teaching and research interests branch into US/Western and Chinese music. He has written on Mari Esabel Valverde, John Sharpley, and Robert Casteels, whose lives and music are illuminated by the frameworks of postcolonial global circulations and/or queer theory. His work on Chinese music is concentrated on the concept of alienation, including varied contemporary responses to cosmopolitanism, and alienation from identities shaped by imperialism and conflicts in the Republican Chinese period (1912-1949). He is the editor of Queer Ear (Oxford University Press), which won a 2024 Society for Music Theory award, and “Global Music History Course Design” (JMHP), which won a 2025 American Musicological Society Teaching Award. Other edited collections comprise Rethinking Difference in Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Music (Routledge), and the special journal issue “Global Musical Modernisms” (TCM, Q1).
Possible student supervision topics (not exclusive):
Chinese minority musics (e.g., Tibetan composer Jokar, Tibetan Buddhist music).
Chinese popular music (e.g., the incorporation of folk singing in pop).
Chinese avant-garde music (e.g., Chinese elements in Chen Yi’s works).
Chinese piano and symphonic music (e.g. Chiang Wen-yeh).
Chinese music aesthetics (e.g., the concept of yun and its role in traditional Chinese music).
Chinese music digital streaming (e.g., TikTok).
Chinese music therapy (e.g., the therapeutic use of Chinese music and medicine).
Chinese music fandom (e.g., fan communities around Chinese pop artists).
Chinese cross-border music transmission (e.g., spread of Chinese music to Japan and Korea, and vice versa).
Chinese in the Cold War (e.g., Sino-Soviet musical relations).
Chinese music and ecology (e.g., music and ecological philosophies like 气).
Chinese AI music technology (e.g., AI generated music).
Human-technology continuum (e.g., Chinese streaming services’ impact on user behavior)
Innovative transmission of traditional music (e.g., the use of WeChat for sharing traditional Chinese tunes).
East Asian virtual pop stars (e.g., Luo Tianyi).
Cultural Revolution (e.g., the use of revolutionary operas as tools of political messaging).
Chinese music and women (e.g., the commodification of women in Jiangnan sizhu music ensembles).
Chinese music and gender (e.g., cross-gender singing in Chinese opera)
Chinese music in Southeast Asia (e.g., traditional Chinese music in Singapore).
Chinese music history (e.g., the guqin during the Tang Dynasty).
Chinese music analysis (e.g., drumming patterns in Peking opera).
QTBIPOC composers (e.g., Julian Eastman)
Queer listening (e.g., queer meaning invested in Schumann's Dichterliebe).
Queer temporalities in music (e.g., non-linear narratives in queer jazz).
Queer opera (e.g., camp aesthetics).
Queer pop (e.g., glam rock).
Queer musicology and activism (e.g., queer choral movement).
Queer spaces and soundscapes (e.g., queer clubs).
Queer folk traditions (e.g., queer Appalachian ballads).
Queer dance scenes (e.g., circuit music).