Staff profile

Eamonn Bell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Durham University. His research interests include the history of technology as it relates to musical production and consumption in the twentieth century, with a focus on the uses of digital computers in the period between about 1955 and 1970, the application of mathematical and contemporary computational techniques to solve problems in musicology and music theory, and the visualization of musical data.

Formerly a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Music, Trinity College Dublin, his recent research has examined how the once-ubiquitous Compact Disc (CD) audio format was designed, subverted, reproduced and domesticated for musical ends. This project was supported by the Irish Research Council under the Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship programme for the period 2019–2021.

Before returning to Europe, he completed a PhD in Music Theory from Columbia University (2019), where he wrote a dissertation on the early use of digital computers in the analysis of musical scores under the supervision of Joseph Dubiel. At Columbia, he designed and taught a course on the critique of “digital music” (2018), and instructed the undergraduate sections in history of Western music for non-musicians (2018) and the fundamentals of music theory (2017). Shortly before he began graduate studies in music at Columbia, he graduated from TCD with a B.A. (Mod.) in Music and Mathematics (2013).

Eamonn is accepting research students (masters and doctoral level). To make an initial inquiry, please email (a) an up-to-date version of your CV and (b) a short, 150-word project proposal (including relevant references). 

• digital humanities
• digital musicology
• history of technology

Chapter in book

• Bell, E. (2023). Exploring Time-Coded Comments on YouTube Music Videos of ‘Top 40’ Pop 2000–20. In H. Rogers, J. Freitas, & J. F. Porfírio (Eds.), YouTube and Music: Online Culture and Everyday Life (255-276). Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501387302.0024

Conference Paper

• Bell, E., Kartaki, E., Rodriguez Echavarria, K., & Sujon, Z. (2024, June). A Roadmap for Embedding and Enhancing Digital Skills in the Arts and Humanities. Paper presented at UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association 2024 Annual Event, Cork, Ireland
• Bell, E. (2021, October). Two musical episodes at the piano keyboard in the study of human information-processing: Information as ‘cognitive good’ in interdisciplinary research. Presented at 2021 Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), Toronto, ON and Online

Journal Article

• Gordon, R. L., Martschenko, D. O., Nayak, S., Niarchou, M., Morrison, M. D., Bell, E., Jacoby, N., & Davis, L. K. (2023). Confronting ethical and social issues related to the genetics of musicality. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1522(1), https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14972
• Niarchou, M., Gustavson, D. E., Sathirapongsasuti, J. F., Anglada-Tort, M., Eising, E., Bell, E., McArthur, E., Straub, P., Aslibekyan, S., Auton, A., Bell, R. K., Bryc, K., Clark, S. K., Elson, S. L., Fletez-Brant, K., Fontanillas, P., Furlotte, N. A., Gandhi, P. M., Heilbron, K., Hicks, B., …Gordon, R. L. (2022). Genome-wide association study of musical beat synchronization demonstrates high polygenicity. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(9), 1292-1309. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01359-x
• Bell, E. (2021). Cybernetics, listening, and sound-studio phenomenotechnique in Abraham Moles’s Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique (1958). Resonance (Oakland, Calif.), 2(4), 523-558. https://doi.org/10.1525/res.2021.2.4.523
• Bell, E. (2021). Interleaving as Cultural Technique in the Audio CD and the End of Archaeophonography. Media theory, 5(1), 115-146
• Bell, E. (2019). Hacking Jeff Minter’s Virtual Light Machine: Unpacking the Code and Community Behind an Early Software-Based Music Visualizer. Volume ! (En ligne), 15(1), 37-59. https://doi.org/10.4000/volume.7254

Presentation

• Bell, E. (2024, June). Reading CD Readers. Presented at Code as Conversation: Transmedia Dialogues Around Critical Code Studies, Cambridge Digital Humanities, Cambridge University
• Bell, E., & Micaellef Grimaud, A. (2024, June). Towards a digital skills infrastructure for UK-based music researchers: A report on a pilot project. Presented at Digital Humanities Congress 2024, University of Sheffield