Floris Schuiling is a musicologist specialising in the study of musical performance. His work focuses on how musicians interact with technology in their creative process, and how such small-scale interactions are shaped by larger cultural and historical developments.

Much of his research deals with contemporary musical performance, and uses ethnographic methods to study the creative processes of musicians. As a historian, his main research area is music since 1945, including jazz, experimental, and popular music, with a particular focus on the music history of the Netherlands, in a global and (post-)colonial context.

A key area of interest is the relation between music notation and performance, especially in improvised music. His doctoral research was a study of the Dutch improvising collective the Instant Composers Pool, focusing on the role of their notated repertoire in their music. A subsequent project, financed with an NWO Veni grant, developed the concept of Notation Cultures, providing an innovative account of the role of notation in musical performance practices.

Currently, Schuiling is part of the Academy of Musicology and Musicianship, a project for educational innovation looking to create more opportunities for collaboration between musicology and conservatory education in the Netherlands. This project is led by Michiel Schuijer and is funded by a Comenius grant.

From september 2023 Schuiling will lead a five-year research project, inquiring into the development of freely improvised music in a postcolonial context. Looking into the participation of postcolonial migrant musicians in Dutch jazz and improvised music, it asks to what extent notions of musical freedom were entangled with whiteness. This project is funded by an ERC Starting Grant.

Areas of interest:

• Musical performance studies
• Improvisation
• Music Notation
• Musical creativity
• Jazz and free improvisation
• Music since 1945
• Music and postcolonialism