Trevor R. Nelson, Ph.D. (He/Him) is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Wichita State University and a scholar interested in the connections between music, politics, and identity formation. Central to all of his work are questions of how music education practices and institutions contribute to and maintain historical inequities, as well as the drive to develop practical solutions to create a more just artistic world.

Trevor’s musicological research centers the post-World War II British Commonwealth and how music informed globally minded Britishness. His current book project, Let’s Make a Commonwealth: Musical Britishness at the Twilight of Empire, considers music as a form of educational media that teachers and broadcasters used to reform British identity in the wake of imperial decline. Other research interests include music education radio and television programs, children’s music cultures, British opera, and the connections between music and the British crown. Trevor has presented his research at numerous regional, national and international conferences and colloquia. He was the recipient of a Wichita State University Research and Creative Activity Grant, the 2023 Charles Warren Fox Award, the 2018 T. Temple Tuttle Prize, the 2019 Glenn Watkins Dissertation Research Grant, and a Music & Letters Trust Grant, among others. Trevor’s writing has been published in Twentieth-Century Music, Ethnomusicology Review, Notes, and NABMSA Reviews (here and here).

For Trevor, his research and background in music education actively informs his pedagogical pursuits. In his teaching, Trevor empowers students to ask questions through modeling a diverse range of analytic frameworks. He has taught a range of survey and topical music history courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and for diverse student populations. Other teaching experiences include serving as a Teaching Assistant for a wide range of courses, and serving as a writing consultant at Eastman and Michigan State. In the Spring of 2020, Trevor partnered with the Rochester Education Justice Initiative to offer a course on American Popular Music at a prison in Western New York. For his work in the classroom, Trevor has received numerous teaching awards, including the University of Rochester’s Edward Peck Curtis Award (2019), the Eastman School of Music’s Teaching Assistant Prize (2017), and Michigan State University’s Somers Award (2016).

Trevor is an active member of the American Musicological Society and the North American British Music Studies Association. At the Eastman School of Music, he was a member of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Student Faculty Alliance, an organization which advocates to make Eastman and other music institutions in Western New York more equitable institutions. Trevor was also chosen to serve on the Eastman Action Commission for Racial Justice, a task force charged with reviewing and reforming Eastman’s curriculum, personnel policies, and student life in order to create a more racially just and equitable conservatory culture. Trevor also served on the organizing committee for Disruption. Action. Change: Creating a More Just and Equitable Arts Ecosystem, a virtual symposium dedicated to upending existing organizational policy, bias, and protocols are vital to the future of the performing arts as we know it. As part of this series, he hosted a session on disrupting performance practice traditions in the opera world. Trevor has served as both President (2018-19) and Secretary (2017-18) of the Eastman Graduate Musicology Association, and previously served on the advisory board for MusicTheoryExamplesByWomen.Com. 

Before starting at WSU in January 2024, Trevor was the Academic Affairs Specialist for the Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs office at the University of Rochester’s Arts, Sciences and Engineering unit, and as an Academic Advisor for the College at University of Rochester. He completed his Ph.D. at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester in 2023. Trevor also holds a Master of Arts in Musicology and Graduate Certificate in Women’s & Gender Studies from Michigan State University (2016), and a Bachelor of Music in Instrumental Music Education from Appalachian State University (2013). 

Outside of academia, Trevor is a avid tennis player, amateur baker, SCOTUS buff, and loyal cat dad.

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