Dr Sangheon Lee is a South Korean musicologist and musician (guitarist). His research is grounded in a multilingual and transnational intellectual background, shaped by academic training in South Korea and France as well as long-term engagement with guitar-based musical practice. He earned his PhD in musicology from Gustave Eiffel University (France) in 2022 with a dissertation exploring the musical embodiment of urgency and nihilism in early American hardcore punk, alongside the historical evolution of guitar-driven short fast rock songs. Following his doctorate, he taught music history, analysis, and aesthetics as a Fixed-Term Lecturer (Attaché temporaire d’enseignement et de recherche / ATER) at the same university. He also holds the French national qualification for university teaching and research (CNU qualification, Section 18: Arts).

Since May 2025, he has been working as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield (UK) through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme. His current research develops a methodological framework for the study of music, using late Soviet and post-Soviet post-punk as a case study that integrates musicological, textual, and sociocultural analysis. His work is particularly concerned with musical temporality, repetition, existential nihilism, and the ways in which sound and form disclose historically situated modes of aesthetic experience.

Alongside this postdoctoral project, he is currently developing and preparing several interconnected publications and conference papers on topics including the transnational genealogy of “Louie Louie” and its cover traditions; the Hungarian avant-garde post-punk project Spions and its “philosophy of treason”; the self-destructive poetics of lyrics in early hardcore punk; degrowth-oriented perspectives on punk aesthetics; and the idea of “producing before meaning” in the recordings of the Soviet band Kino. His recent and ongoing work also includes a forthcoming chapter for the Routledge Sex Pistols Handbook examining a musical dialectic of “horizontal” and “vertical” perspective in the band’s recordings, as well as an ontological approach to Chuck Berry’s guitar riffing through the concept of a “rhythm of confidence.” In addition, he is contributing to the forthcoming Intellect volume Punk and Philosophy with a study on the term “nihilism” and its critical usage within punk discourse. Together, these projects reflect his broader interest in how musical forms articulate modes of existence, mediation, and aesthetic life across cultural and historical contexts.

Before moving to Europe, he completed a BA in French Language and Literature at Korea University (2004) and an MA at the Korea National University of Arts (2012), focusing on Richard Wagner’s writings as “intellectual” and their critical reception by François-Joseph Fétis and Charles Baudelaire. During this period, he took a five-year break from academia to work as a full-time musician, leading the band Deafening Street as lyricist, composer, guitarist, and vocalist—performing widely and releasing several recordings, including a studio album. He later pursued a second MA at the University of Paris 8, where he specialised in punk rock studies.

Dr Lee currently serves as Membership Secretary of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), Assistant Editor of IASPM Journal, and a member of the editorial board of Punk & Post-Punk. His recent publications appear in both Anglophone and Francophone venues, including IASPM Journal, Revue Française d’Études Américaines, and Revue Musicale OICRM.