Mark Gotham holds the rare distinction of having been appointed to faculty positions in the humanities (Professor of Music Theory at T. U. Dortmund), in STEM (in Computer Science at Durham) and 'in between' (now in the Digital Humanities Department at King's). Mark holds a PhD from Cambridge, MMus from the RNCM, and a BA from Oxford (where he graduated at the top of his cohort).

Mark’s research specialises in computational methods for music theory, analysis, and composition. Computer-aided methods can help not only to advance what we know about (a wide range of) musical structures, but also what we can do with that knowledge, and who can access it. Central to much of this is the encoding of human analyses in computer-readable formats.

Beyond research, Mark’s work spans commercial contracts, musical composition, and more. Commercial contracts have included the 'Beethoven X' project for Deutsche Telekom. Composition highlights include broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and national Chinese television, and the debut CD of Mark’s compositions (Utrumne est Ornatum, REGCD485) attracting 5-star critical reviews.

Earlier in his career, Mark was a highly active as a performer (singer, multi-instrumentalist, and conductor). Highlights included conducting contemporary music projects with principal players of the Philharmonia Orchestra and LSO.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Musical composition, theory, analysis
• Computational / digital methods
• Corpus creation and study
• Mathematical modelling
• Wider access, outreach, pedagogical/public-facing resources

Teaching

Beyond the research topics (listed above), this covers wider cultural computation of (for instance) image and video data, data compression etc.