Dr. Paul Craenen is composer and sound artist, researcher professor and currently head of the research group Music, Education and Society at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.

After completing his master’s degrees in piano and chamber music, he taught piano and experimental music at various music academies in Flanders for over fifteen years. He was the driving force behind pioneering educational projects on new music. His compositions are characterised by the use of electronics, corporeality and choreographical elements. He started postdoctoral research at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent and later continued it through docARTES, a doctoral programme for practice-based research in the arts. He received his PhD from Leiden University in 2011 with a musical portfolio and a dissertation on the music-performing body in contemporary composed music. An adapted version was published by Leuven University Press in 2014 under the title ‘Composing under the Skin. The music-making body at the composer’s desk’. From 2012 to 2018, he was director of Musica Impulse Centre, a Flemish organisation for music education and arts participation. Under his leadership, the organisation received a YEAH prize for the most innovative European youth production in the ‘Performance’ category (2015), and an EFFE quality label for the AlbaNova Festival (2017). He curated a sound art collection, community music projects and a wide variety of musical events. In early 2018, he was appointed lector and head of the research group Music, Education and Society at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. His current research explores the social relevance of musical expertise. Thanks to his expertise at the intersection of research, art practice and education, he is frequently asked as an expert, opinion maker or curator. He supervises research, lectures and publishes on a wide range of music-related topics and is involved in several working groups and committees on artistic research, curriculum innovation and scientific integrity in the arts.

Research interests: music curriculum research, corporeality in contemporary music, embodied music cognition, trans-disciplinarity and intermedia, aesthetics, musical values, ethics in music.