Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA)
Alumni
Since 2009, at ACPA, 90 candidates received their PhD in Creative and Performing Arts. On this page you will find an overview of ACPA's alumni.
2024
Donald Weber
The Bureau of Operational Landscapes
(December 2024)
Guy Livingston
Performing musical silence: markers, gestures, and embodiments
(December 2024)
Johannes Boer
The tacit knowledge of Claudio Monteverdi as expressed in the opera La Tragedia di Claudio M
(November 2024)
Giuliano Bracci
Transcribing: Between Listening, Memory and Invention
(November 2024)
Carlo Diaz
Artistic practices of historical sound
(June 2024)
Siamak Anvari
Materialisation of Fixed Media Music
(June 2024)
2023
Jochanan (Jan) Pieter van Driel
Joodse muziek en joods muzikaal denken
(November 2023)
Teunis van der Zwart
Giovanni Punto (1746-1803): cor basse célèbre
(October 2023)
Marina Liontou-Mochament
Expanded inspiration: metric improvisation and compositional tools in contemporary modal music
(October 2023)
Suzan Tunca
Spiritual corporeality: towards embodied gnosis through a dancing language
(October 2023)
Gabriel Paiuk
Mutable audible: an operative ontology of the sound image
(October 2023)
Johannes Leertouwer
2022
Carolien Hermans
Participatory sense-making in physical play and dance improvisation: drawing meaningful connections between self, others and world.
(December 2022)
Anja Groten
Figuring Things Out Together. On the Relationship Between Design and Collective Practice.
(November 2022)
Heloisa Amaral
Mediating from Within. Metaxical Amplification as an Alternative Sonic Environment for Classical Music Performance
(November 2022)
Maya Rasker
Woord en wetsteen. Beschouwingen over schrijven op het snijvlak van kunst en wetenschap
(October 2022)
2021
Nizar Rohana
‘Ūd Taqsīm as a Model of Pre-Composition
(December 2021)
Bert Mooiman
An improvisatory approach to nineteenth-century music
(December 2021)
Eleni Kamma
Taking Place: Parrhesiastic Theater as a model for artistic practice
(December 2021)
Jack Segbars
The Emergent Artistic Object in the Postconceptual Condition
(November 2021)
Franziska Fleischanderl
Elizabeth Dobbin
Mark Edwards
Moving Early Music: Improvisation and the Work-Concept in Seventeenth- Century French Keyboard Performance
(January 2021)
2020
Issa Boulos
The Palestinian music-making experience in the West Bank, 1920s to 1959: Nationalism, colonialism, and identity
(November 2020)
k.g. Guttman
Territoriality and choreography in site-situated performance
(November 2020)
Stanimira Withers
Musika: The Becoming of an Artistic Musical Metaphysics
(October 2020)
Thalia Hoffman
The Guava Platform
(October 2020)
Kevin Toksöz Fairbairn
Poiesis and the Performance Practice of Physically Polyphonic Notations
(June 2020) cum laude
Kai-wen Chiu
Phónè and the political potential of metal music : a scholarly intervention
(May 2020)
Joost Grootens
Blind Maps and Blue Dots
(April 2020)
Joost Grootens is professor of artistic research in visual design at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.
2019
Ilya Ziblat Shay
Between Freedom and Fixity: Artistic Reflections on Composition and Improvisation
(December 2019)
Riccardo Giacconi
The Variational Mode - Three cases about documents, artworks and animation
(November 2019)
Emlyn Stam
In Search of A Lost Language: Performing in Early-Recorded Style in Viola and String Quartet Repertoires
October 2019)
Petra Klusmeyer
Sonic Peripheries: Middling With/In the Event
(September 2019)
Susan Williams
FINDING FOCUS - Using external focus of attention for practicing and performing music
(June 2019)
Magda Pucci
Cantos da Floresta
(March 2019)
2018
Gilbert Blin
The Reflections of Memory- An account of a cognitive approach to historically informed staging
(December 2018)
Andrea Stultiens
Ebifananyi, a study of photographs in Uganda in and through an artistic practice
(November 2018)
Rina Visser
Veranderend kunstenaarschap: de rol en betekenis van de kunstenaar in participatieve kunstpraktijken
(November 2018)
Henri Bok
The deep-rooted microtonality of the bass clarinet
(October 2018)
Crawford Young
La Cetra Cornuta : the Horned Lyre of the Christian World
(June 2018)
Elske Tinbergen
The 'cello' in the Low Countries- The instrument and its practical use in the 17th and 18th centuries
(June 2018)
Jonas Staal
Propaganda Art from the 20th to the 21st Century
(January 2018)
Artist and founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012-ongoing) and the campaign New Unions (2016-ongoing). Staal’s work includes interventions in public space, exhibitions, theater plays, publications, and lectures, focusing on the relationship between art, democracy, and propaganda. The artist is a regular contributor to e-flux journal.
2017
Yannis Kyriakides
Imagined Voices A Poetics of Music-Text-Film
(December 2017)
Composer and sound artist. Currently teaching composition at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.
Joost Vanmaele
The Informed Performer
Towards a bio-culturally informed performers’ practice
(December 2017)
Vanmaele currently teaches at the Conservatory of Bruge where he is president of the piano department. Joost Vanmaele is teaching staff member of the docARTES Doctoral Programme at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent and on the Advisory Editorial Board of Forum+ for Research in the Arts, the peer-reviewed journal for research and arts in the Lowlands.
Carlos Roos
Global Music: Recasting and Rethinking the Popular as Global
(November 2017)
Currently teaching at Webster Leiden Campus in the Department of Media Communications and Fine Arts. Also finishing up his PhD in Philosophy at Leiden University and teaching the course Popular and Global Music at Leiden University.
Dick de Graaf
Beyond borders : broadening the artistic palette of (composing) improvisers in jazz
(November 2017)
Currently coach of master ensembles and master research at the jazz faculty of Codarts University of the Arts in Rotterdam.
Lilo Nein
Writing performance : on relations between texts and performances
(October 2017)
Visual and performance artist
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Audible Absence: Searching for the Site in Sound Production
(March 2017)
Currently: Sound artist, researcher, writer and theorist. Visiting Professor at the Academy of Art and Design, Basel. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Arts and Humanities, American University of Beirut, 2018.
2016
Niels Berentsen
Discantare Super Planum Cantum : new approaches to vocal polyphonic improvisation 1300-1470
(December 2016)
Singer, researcher, and music educator. Niels regularly appears as a tenor-soloist in cantatas and oratorios, and performs with vocal ensembles such as The Ascoli Ensemble (The Hague) and Capella Sancta Maria (Amsterdam). As a researcher, Niels has investigated techniques of polyphonic improvisation in the 1300-1500 period. Guest-lessons and workshops on polyphonic improvisation have been given at the Russian Gnessin’s Academy of Music (Moscow), the Israel Conservatory of Music (Tel-Aviv), the Conservatory of Amsterdam, the Kodály Institute (Kecskemét), and the House of Polyphony (Leuven). Currently also teacher at the Master Theory of Early Music at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague.
Frank Blokland
On the origin of patterning in movable Latin type: Renaissance standardisation, systematisation, and unitisation of textura and roman type
(October 2016)This research was conducted to test the hypothesis that the German inventor of movable Latin type Johannes Gutenberg (c.1400–1468) and his colleagues developed a highly standardized system for creating textura foundry type. In addition, this system was adapted for the production of roman type in Renaissance Italy. For this purpose, the humanistic handwriting was cast in predetermined proportions, arising from an intrinsic systematization in the written source models. This research aimed to demonstrate that technical aspects of Renaissance type production had a direct influence on the proportions of textura, roman, and ultimately italic type, and thus to the related conditioning that forms the basis of the perception of typographers and readers. Not only has this research provided greater insight into the origins of Latin type, but the results can also be used for a more consistently organized digital-font production, and for the parameterization of type-design processes. It provided the basis for software for applying customizable frameworks based on the patterns derived from the archetypal Renaissance type models. Some of these tools can, for example, be used to replace optical spacing completely or it can be applied additionally to spacing by eye. See also www.lettermodel.org.
Jaap Brouwer
Johan van Meurs. Een studie over een pionierend orgeladviseur
(June 2016)
Clarence Charles
Calypso music : identity and social influence : the Trinidadian experience
(November 2016)
Maria Cleary
The 'harpe organisée', 1720-1840 : rediscovering the lost pedal techniques on harps with a single-action pedal mechanism
(December 2016)
Maria holds the position of historical harp professor in Verona Conservatory, Italy. In 2016 she joined the renowned team of teachers at Urbino Summer Music course and gave a masterclass at the Juilliard School of Music New York.
Sophie Ernst
The magic of projection : augmentation and immersion in media art
(December 2016)
Visual artist Sophie Ernst frequently presents slide-lectures on ideas pertaining to her work. Recent lectures include a.o.: “What is a conflict?”, Imperial War Museum North, UK; “HOME”, Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, FR. Her video works have been shown among others at the Moscow Bienale, Asia Triennial Manchester, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Nasher Museum, Duke University, International Video Festival, Cairo, Johnson Museum, Cornell University.
Hans Scholten
Het Urban Future-project
(November 2016)
Visual artist.
Christopher Williams
Tactile paths : on and through notation for improvisers
(December 2016)
Senior Scientist at the Doctoral School for Artistic Research at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
Andrew Wright
The Polyphonic Touch. Coarticulation and polyphonic expression in the performance of piano and organ music
(June 2016)
Currently working as a concert pianist and piano teacher. As an organist, he performs perform on the most important and largest organs of the Netherlands, such as those of the St. Bavo Basilica in Haarlem, the Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, the Nieuwe Kerk in Katwijk, and the Petruskerk in Leens. He is cantor-organist of the Koningkerk in Voorburg.
2015
Donna Agrell
Repertoire for a Swedish Bassoon Virtuoso. Approaching early nineteenth-century works composed for Frans Preumayr with an original Grenser & Wiesner bassoon
(December 2015)
Currently: professor for historical bassoon at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and is a founding member of The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century.
Inês de Avena Braga
Dolce Napoli: approaches for performances. Recorders for the Neapolitan Baroque repertoire 1695-1759
(July 2015)
Currently: Recorder player with ensembles Inês d'Avena & Claudio Ribeiro, New Collegium, La Cicala, Concerto Köln and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Teacher and Research Supervisor at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague since 2012.
Itandehui Jansen
Finding One’s Own Voice as an Indigenous Filmmaker
(October 2015)
Currently: Filmmaker; lecturer and director of the Undergraduate Film & TV program at the University of Edinburgh.
Ruchama Noorda
℞eForm
(December 2015)
Ruchama was an artist using diverse media and materials in performances and installations, investigating the legacy of the early 20th century Life Reform Movement. She passed away on 11 October 2024.
Nicoleta Paraschivescu
Die Partimenti von Giovanni Paisiello: Ansätze zu ihrem Verständnis
(September 2015)
Currently: teaching the organ at the Musik Akademie Basel (AMS) and is titular organist at the church of St. Theodor in Basel (organ built by Kern, 1984). She was awarded the 2016 hibou-Stiftung Prize in recognition of her outstanding research on partimenti.
2014
Anil Çamci
The Cognitive Continuum of Electronic Music
(December 2014)
Anil is an Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan. His work investigates new tools and theories for multimodal worldmaking using a variety of media ranging from electronic music to virtual reality.
Miguelángel Clerc Parada
(De)Composing Immersion
(November 2014)
Miguelangel Clerc Parada is a composer, sound artist, researcher and guitarist. He has composed pieces for soloists, music ensembles, for installations and dance performances for venues from Europe, Asia, North and South America. He has composed music for the Nieuw Ensemble, Ensemble Klang, Ensemble Modelo62 (The Netherlands), CIMA (Chile), Schlagquartett Koln (Germany), among others. He also has composed music for dance and live art performances for choreographers as Pedro Goucha, Cora Bos-Kroese, Marina Mascarell, Karine Guizzo, Heidi Vierthaler, Loïc Perela, Astrid Boons and for the performance group mmmmm (UK).
Claire Genewein
Vokales Instrumentalspiel in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts.
Die Aufführungspraxis italienischer Instrumentalmusik in der Auseinandersetzung mit Vokalmusik und Text: Quellen und moderne Umsetzung
(June 2014)
Claire Genewein works as a freelance flautist in various ensembles including La Cetra (Basel), Venice Baroque Orchestra, L’Orfeo Baroque Orchestra, the Bachstiftung St. Gallen, L’Arcadia, Ensemble Miroir and the Basel Chamber Orchestra and has worked with directors including Michi Gaigg, Gustav Leonhardt, Andrea Marcon, Jordi Savall, Geoffrey Lancaster, William Christie and Ruedi Lutz. Since 2006 Claire has taught early flutes and historical performance practice at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz (Austria) and since 2010 at the Zurich University of the Arts. Additionally, she regularly teaches courses including Bamberger Sommer Oper (Germany), the Tage der Alter Musik in Linz (Austria), the Iona University of Corfu (Greece), Schloss Poellau (Austria) and at the Music University of Trossingen (Germany).
Juan Parra Cancino
Multiple Paths: Towards a Performance Practice in Computer Music
(December 2014)
Since 2009 Juan has been appointed as a joint researcher of the Orpheus Institute Research Centre in Music (ORCiM) to work on the topics of creativity and performance applied to electronic music. The recognition for his work has given him the chance to participate in projects and give lectures in centers such as CCRMA (Stanford University, USA), Oberlin College (USA) Banff Center for the Arts (CA), Tokyo University of the Arts (JP), Republic University (Uruguay), Leuenburg Studios (Germany), Walter Maas Huis (NL), and to be composer in residence at the Centre for Composers (Gotland, Sweden) and University of North Texas (Denton, USA), among others.
Anna Scott
Romanticizing Brahms: Early Recordings and the Reconstruction of Brahmsian Identity
(December 2014)
Dr. Anna Scott performs extensively as a soloist and as a collaborative pianist; she teaches and supervises Masters and PhD students at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Leiden University, and the Orpheus Instituut; and she is on the coordination team of the DocArtes Doctoral Programme in the Musical Arts at the Orpheus Instituut. Currently University lecturer at Leiden University.
Hendrik Vanden Abeele
What late medieval chant manuscripts do to a present-day performer of plainchant
(December 2014)
Hendrik Vanden Abeele is a pianist, singer, lecturer and researcher. He founded the plainchant group 'Psallentes' in 2000. The ensemble seeks out plainchant and associated polyphony from various historical periods. Hendrik currently works as a postdoctoral researcher and staff member of the Alamire Foundation (Leuven University, Belgium).
Barbara Varassi Pega
Creating and Re-creating Tangos: Artistic processes and innovations in Music by Pugliese, Salgán, Piazzolla and Beytelmann
(December 2014)
Barbara is a pianist, arranger, composer, music professor and researcher, giving also conferences, seminars and workshops on (tango) music and artistic research. Currently a lecturer and artistic research coach for the Master of Music at Fontys University of Fine and Performing Arts, Tilburg; and artistic research coach for the Master of Music at Codarts University of the Arts, Rotterdam.
2013
Krien Clevis
LOCVS. Memory and Transience in the Representation of Place. From Italic Domus to Artistic Environment
(October 2013)
Artist, researcher and curator. As a lecturer in the Arts Faculty Maastricht, she teaches Artistic Research in the Fine Arts department (BFA/MFA). She is involved in a post-doc project at the Research Centre Autonomy and Public Sphere in the Arts at the same faculty.
Cathy van Eck
Between Air and Electricity - Microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments
(December 2013)
Currently: Composer. Cathy teaches at the University of the Arts Bern and her book Between air and electricity - Microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments was published in 2017.
Falk Hübner
Shifting Identities - The musician as theatrical performer
(November 2013)
Falk is core teacher for research at HKU School of Music and is head of the research group music and performativity at the Professorship Performative Processes of Nirav Christophe, also at HKU. Falk is a Creative Director of the Innovative Conservatoire (ICON) and member of the board of Forum+, journal for research and the arts, based in Antwerp.
Wim Kok
Thirty Sixth Series of the Next Kind of Series
(December 2013)
Marlon Titre
Thinking through the guitar: the sound-cell-texture chain
(December 2013)
Marlon Titre is managing-director of Filmhuis Den Haag and head of the Classical Department of the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.
Mark van Tongeren
Grenzen van het hoorbare: over de meerstemmigheid van het lichaam / Thresholds of the audible: about the multiphony of the body
(March 2013)
Mark van Tongeren is a sound explorer and performance artist. He did ground-breaking research and vocal experiments in the field of overtone singing, which he began studying around 1990. During his PhD studies he founded a vocal laboratory (Paraphony) to develop little known aspects of multi-voiced harmonic singing. He created a series of compositions for two or more voices, called 0… (‘Nulpunten’ or ‘Zero-points’), which make audible hundreds of possible connections or permutations within the natural harmonic series, so that it ‘encounters itself.’ The results were presented in 2010 and 2013 by Mark van Tongeren and Rollin Rachelle, aka the Superstringtrio, in the performances entitled 0… and Incognito Ergo Sum in Amsterdam and Poland. Composer Paul Oomen also conducted the three-hour Overtone Singing Marathon held at the occasion of van Tongeren’s PhD defense in 2013.
Gerard Unger
Alverata, a present-day, European typeface with roots in the middle ages
(September 2013)
Gerard Unger taught as visiting professor at the University of Reading, UK. Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, and taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy till January 2007. From 2006 till 2012 he was Professor of Typography at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Free lance designer from 1972. He has designed stamps, coins, magazines, newspapers, books, logo’s, corporate identities, annual reports and other objects, and many typefaces. His most important publication is Terwijl je leest (1997) (in English While You're Reading). Unger, who has died aged 76, did much to improve legibility in newspapers, books and transport systems. His best known typeface, Swift, with sharp serifs (the horizontal feet of letters) was used to typeset the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, alongside his matching sans serif type, Argo.
2012
Ann Bessemans
Letterontwerp voor kinderen met een visuele functiebeperking / Typeface design for visually impaired children
(October 2012)
Her typographic graduation project was awarded. In October 2012, she defended her PhD (Type Design for Children with Low Vision), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gerard Unger. She was granted two scholarships by Microsoft.
She works as a researcher at the PXL-MAD Shcool of Arts (Media Arts & Design), where she also teaches graphic design, typography, and type design. Recently she was awarded a grant from Microsoft for a project on visual prosody. Ann was a finalist in the New Scientist Wetenschapstalent 2015 competition, which recognizes early career researchers in the sciences. Recently Ann set up a Research Institute called READSEARCH.
Henk Borgdorff
The Conflict of the Faculties; Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia
(April 2012) cum laude
Academic Director and Professor of Research in the Arts at Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University, Faculty of Humanities, and professor (lector) at University of the Arts The Hague, Royal Conservatoire (The Netherlands). President of the Society for Artistic Research.
Nadine Chahine
Reading Arabic; Legibility Studies for the Arabic Script
(October 2012)
Currently: UK Type Director and Legibility Expert at Monotype.
Arne Deforce
LABORINTH Π - Thinking as experiment – ‘472’ Meditations on the necessity of creative thinking and experimenting in the performance practice of complex music from 1962 - today
(November 2012)
Arne Deforce is a member of 'artistic board' and the principle cellist of the contemporary music ensemble 'Champ d'Action' and is also teaching history of music and chambermusic at the conservatory of music in Brugge.
Anne Marie Dragosits
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger (ca. 1581 – 1651): Betrachtungen zu seinem Leben und Umfeld, seiner Vokalmusik und seinem praktischen Material zum Basso continuo-Spiel
In December 2012 Anne Marie Dragosits finished her artistic PhD on Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger and his vocal music in the programme docARTES. A revised version of the biographical part of the thesis with lots of additional new information is to be expected as a book in 2019. Since October 2016 Anne Marie is professor for harpsichord at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität Linz.
Juan Sebastian Lach Lau
Harmonic duality; From interval ratios and pitch distance to spectra and sensory dissonance
(December 2012)
Currently: Composer of chamber and electronic music, teacher composition at Las Rosas Conservatory, Mexico. Also part of a contemporary and experimental music ensemble Liminar.
2011
Kathryn Cok
Basso Continuo Sources from the Dutch Republic c.1620-c.1790
(October 2011)
Alessandro Colizzi
Bruno Munari and the invention of modern graphic design in Italy, 1928-1945
(May 2011)
Currently: Professor at UQAM's École de design in Montreal, Canada. Specialized in typography. He is member of the Association Typographique Internationale, Société des designeurs graphiques du Québec, AIS Design, and AIAP (Italian graphic designers’ association).
Paul Craenen
Gecomponeerde Uitvoerders. Het musicerend lichaam vanuit compositorisch perspectief / Composing under the skin
(March 2011)
Yolande Harris
Scorescapes: On Sound, Environment and Sonic Consciousness
(December 2011)
2010
Stefan Belderbos
Van kunstwerk tot religieus ritueel / From artwork to rituals in religion
(December 2010)
Jed Wentz
The relationship between gesture, affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of French tragic opera from Lully to Rameau
(December 2010)
2009
Luk Vaes
Extended Piano Techniques in Theory, History & Performance Practice
(December 2009)