Personal Statement
Dr Katherine Williams joined the University of Liverpool in September 2026 as Research and Innovation Associate on the AHRC-funded Community Jazz Big Bands in England project.

Katherine's PhD (University of Nottingham 2012) was titled 'Cross-cultural comparisons of the Classical Impulse in Jazz', and considered value judgements held towards and within jazz in Britain and the US. During her doctoral studies Katherine held a position as Senior Lecturer in Jazz and Music Production at Leeds College of Music, and taught at Anglia Ruskin University, Cardiff University, and the University of Bristol before joining the University of Plymouth as Lecturer in Music and Head of the Performance Pathway 2014-2020. Most recently, Katherine was Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, working on the AHRC- and DFG-funded Songwriting Camps in the 21st Century.

Research Overview
Within the realms of popular music and jazz, Katherine's research specialisms are collaboration, improvisation, identity formation, gender, and the places and spaces of music. Her first monograph, Rufus Wainwright, (Equinox Publishing 2016) combined aspects of the singer-songwriter's life story with scholarly readings drawn from several methodologies. Her two edited collections on the figure of the singer-songwriter, The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and The Singer-Songwriter Handbook (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) were at the forefront of songwriting studies, and remain used as textbooks in HEAs around the world. The latter was hailed as 'an inspiring and insightful resource for those working within the sphere of popular music and songwriting; students and educators alike.'

Katherine was the first recipient of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Trust Research Fellowship in 2015, which enabled her to spend an extended period of time working with the Duke Ellington Archives held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C., and in the historical jazz recording collection at the Institute of Jazz Studies in Rutgers, New Jersey. This research extends her work on improvisation and composition in Duke Ellington's oeuvre.

Katherine has been part of several funded research networks, including Jazz and Everyday Aesthetics (AHRC, 2016-18), Songwriting Studies (AHRC, 2019-21) and Collaborative Creativity: Sound Recording and Music Making (SSHRC, 2018).