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Last updated 12th June 2025

Frédéric Dufeu is Senior Research Fellow in Music and Music Technology at the University of Huddersfield, where he is currently working on the Digital Playgrounds for Music project (2023-2026) with Michael Clarke and Maria Sappho.

A musicologist, composer, and software developer, Frédéric primarily dedicates his research to the study of electroacoustic music and the application of digital technologies to research into creative arts and music. He is the author, with Michael Clarke and Peter Manning, of the book Inside Computer Music (Oxford University Press, 2020), investigating nine significant works of the repertoire (John Chowning’s Stria, Barry Truax’s Riverrun, Philippe Manoury’s Pluton, Hildegard Westerkamp’s Beneath the Forest Floor, Francis Dhomont’s Phonurgie, Trevor Wishart’s Imago, Jonathan Harvey’s Fourth String Quartet, Cort Lippe’s Music for Tuba and Computer, and Natasha Barrett’s Hidden Values). The book is accompanied by substantial software packages enabling the readers to engage interactively and aurally with the analyses, and to experiment with reproductions of the tools and techniques used by the composers. Frédéric also authored or co-authored over 30 research articles on electroacoustic music, digital tools for musicology, artists such as Christian Marclay, Sébastien Roux, Fabien Lévy, Hans Tutschku, and the collaboration between Christian Fennesz, Mika Vainio and Christian Zanési. He presented his research worldwide in numerous conferences including Sound and Music Computing, International Computer Music Conference, Electroacoustic Studies Music Network, Tracking the Creative Process in Music, and European Conference on Music Analysis.

Frédéric joined the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) at the University of Huddersfield in 2012, when he was recruited as postdoctoral Research Assistant on the AHRC-funded TaCEM project (Technology and Creativity in Electroacoustic Music), initiated by Michael Clarke and Peter Manning (2012-2015). He then worked on several research and development projects within CeReNeM as Research Fellow, before working as lead developer in the ERC-funded IRiMaS project (Interactive Research in Music as Sound), directed by Michael Clarke, in collaboration with Bath Spa university, University College Cork, and IRCAM (2017-2023). He is also a member of Huddersfield’s Creative Coding Lab, led by Alex Harker, and collaborated to the ERC-funded FluCoMa project (Fluid Corpus Manipulation) directed by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (2017-2023). Between 2013 and 2022, he taught historical and analytical approaches to electroacoustic and electronic music and software design for music to all three years of the undergraduate level, and was involved in MA and PhD supervision from 2018.

Frédéric has been a member of the editorial board of Musurgia since 2018, of the editorial committee of the IRCAM Analyses project since 2017, and of the reading committee of the Journal of Creative Music Systems (JCMS) since its creation in 2015; he has also been a reviewer for the Computer Music Journal (since 2023) and Leonardo Music Journal (since 2020), both published by the MIT Press. He has co-organized, with Nicolas Donin and Michael Clarke, the 2017 edition of the Tracking the Creative Process in Music conference at the University of Huddersfield, and has been a member of the organization committee of Journées d'Informatique Musicale (Université Rennes 2, 2010), and of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network conference (Ina-GRM and Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008). He is a reviewer for the French National Research Agency (ANR, in committees CE33 "Interaction, robotics" and CE38 "The Digital Revolution: relationship to knowledge and culture") and is or has been a member of the reading committee of the following conferences: International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), International Conference on AI and Musical Creativity (AIMC), Nova Contemporary Music Meeting (NCMM), Electroacoustic Music Studies Network (EMS), International Workshop on Musical Metacreation (MUME), Computer Simulation of Musical Creativity (CSMC), International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR), and Journées d'Informatique Musicale (JIM).

Frédéric’s qualifications are a Bachelor’s degree in Music and Musicology (Université Rennes 2, France, 2005), a Master’s degree in Arts and Digital Technologies supervised by Bruno Bossis (Rennes 2, 2007) and a PhD in Music supervised by Antoine Bonnet (Rennes 2, 2010). He also holds qualifications to apply for lecturer positions awarded by the French National Council of Universities (CNU), in sections 18 (Arts, 2011, renewed 2015, 2019, 2023) and 22 (History and Civilisations, 2015, renewed 2019, 2023).

After working mostly full-time at the University of Huddersfield from 2012 to 2023, Frédéric is currently being employed part-time (0.2 FTE) and, beyond the university, is pursuing activities of composition and software design and development for artistic and musical creation.