Essays and Statements

A selection of essays and reflective texts exploring listening, disability, composition, and the cultural history of sound. These pieces sit between scholarship and practice: they are neither journal articles nor blog posts, but working documents of thought.

My Personal Soundscape (2025)

A reflection on how lived hearing difference shapes attention, environment, and the experience of everyday sound.

Composing (my) hearing: some reflections (2020)

An exploration of how diplacusis and hearing asymmetry have altered my compositional thinking and musical perception.

Ontology of Silence (2017)

A meditation on silence not as absence, but as a structural and perceptual condition within music and culture.

Ménière’s and Me (2017)

A personal account of balance disorder and hearing loss, and the slow reconstruction of identity that followed.

Aural Diversity (2018)

An early articulation of the concept of aural diversity and its implications for music, institutions, and listening practices.

Aural Diversity and EDI in Music Higher Education (2020)

A critical argument for reframing equality, diversity and inclusion in music through the lens of hearing difference.

Return to Looe Island (2018)

A reflective return to an early creative site, linking memory, landscape and digital experimentation.

Composer’s Statement (2013)

A concise overview of my compositional approach, influences, and the role of systems and listening in my work.

My Access Rider (2021)

A practical document outlining the conditions under which I can work effectively, rooted in lived experience of autism and hearing loss.

For shorter and more frequent writing, see my two blogs:

Andrew Hugill

Notes on music, composition, research projects, and the evolving shape of my practice.

Autistic Professor

Writing on autism, disability, higher education, and the politics of listening.