Professor Dr. Dr. James S. Helgeson is a composer and specialist of the Renaissance, working at the intersections of music, literature, and philosophy. Prior to his appointment to Professor and Dean at the Barenboim-Said Akademie, he held positions as an Associate Professor at Columbia University in New York City, and as a Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge. He also taught at Princeton University and the University of Nottingham. Helgeson‘s first degree is from the Curtis Institute of Music. This was followed by a BA at Oberlin College/Conservatory. In Paris, he studied at the Ecole normale supérieure (rue d’Ulm) and the Université de Paris-VII. He holds two doctorates, in humanities and music, reflecting the Barenboim-Said Akademie’s scope of studies. His first PhD is from Princeton University, where he examined Renaissance theories of music and poetry. He was awarded a second doctorate in Music Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has received grants and visiting fellowships, such as an International Balzan Prize Lecturership, a visiting research residency at St John’s College Oxford, and currently serves as a member of the board of the Société Française d'Étude du Seizième Siècle.
 
Helgeson is the author of two monographs in French Renaissance studies, an edited volume, and numerous articles. Interrelationships between the arts, in particular music and literature in the period before 1600 and since the Second World War, are at the crux of Prof. Helgeson’s past and current research. His work focuses on musical humanism in the French Renaissance as well as first-person writing (prose and music) and the fictional representation of philosophical reflection. He also has a strong interest in critical theory––its institutional cultures, assumptions, and exclusions––and in questions of historical hermeneutics. This field includes post-colonial reflections on hegemony and canonicity in hermeneutic practice, subjects that have been central to the Barenboim-Said Akademie’s mission.
 
At the Academy, he has recently curated the 2023 Edward Said Days and will do so again (with an expanded committee) in 2025. He has taught extensively at the Academy on all levels since 2018.