Huib Schippers

Professor Huib Schippers has a long and diverse history of engagement with the music industry, including performance, education, trade and research. Hailing from a family of western classical music industry professionals but trained as an Indian sitar player, he proceeded with (partially overlapping) careers in performance, education, research, journalism, the record trade, arts policy, community engagement, project management, and senior leadership.

He ran a record business in Amsterdam (1986-1993), wrote on music for national newspapers and a specialist magazine he started (1980-1990), founded the World Music School in Amsterdam (1990-1996), worked in and with conservatoires in The Netherlands, Scandinavia and the UK (1998-2003), and was a driving force behind establishing the World Music & Dance Centre in Rotterdam (2001-2006), recognition of creative outputs in the Australian research landscape (2005-2010), and approaching music sustainability in new ways through the large-scale international collaboration Sustainable futures for music cultures: Towards an ecology of musical diversity (2009-2014), funded by the Australian Research Council (soundfutures.org). 

From 2003-2015, Schippers was the inaugural Director of Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, from where he has led over a dozen innovative projects bringing together research, education, performance, and community engagement, including four editions of Encounters (2005, 2007, 2010, and 2013), explorations of cultural meetings between cultures (qcrcevents.com). 

Published widely in five languages, his 2010 Oxford University Press monograph 'Facing the music: Shaping music education from a global perspective' is now used worldwide as a standard work on cultural diversity in music education. A major edited volume on music and sustainability worldwide , co-edited with Catherine Grant, will be published by Oxford University Press in October 2016.