Alexander Douglas

MA MMus MA FRSA

A self-confessed ‘humanities geek in the body of a musician,’ Alexander Douglas writes both words and music in a range of contexts and settings and is available for commissions, consultancy, education projects and teaching engagements. His work portfolio includes being an Artistic Associate of NHS Research & Development Northwest with whom he works on projects ranging from creativity and communication and he is very keen to develop his professional output in the health research sector. He is also a researcher at the University of Wolverhampton.

As the Artistic Director of ADM Productions, he works as a conductor/MD, composer/arranger and instrumentalist as well as creatively producing projects across classical, jazz and gospel music.

See the Wordpress link for details of his blogging activity.

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Alexander was born in Tanzania to parents who hail from Guyana – the only English-speaking country in South America. He completed his secondary education in the UK before moving to London to being what has become a lifelong study project encompassing both musicology and ethnomusicology, classical music traditions from Europe, several parts of Asia and the Middle East, folk/vernacular traditions from all around the world, Western vernacular traditions including jazz, anthropology, African language literatures, post-colonial theory, philosophy, cultural theory, theology and more – along with music performance traditions from classical choral conducting to klezmer music as a clarinettist…and he hasn’t finished yet! His most recent interest is in the area of mental health – and particularly its relationship to language, culture, cognition, religious identity and praxis, artistic practice and identity – and wider community.

Alexander is a fairly rare beast in the sense that he is a ‘conservative’ Bible-believing Christian with deep interests in both Continental and analytic philosophy as well as Scripture and now contributes to church life as a theological thinker (notorious in certain circles for never giving ‘straight’ answers to questions!). He contends that many Christians have settled for easy answers to difficult questions and regularly engages with those whose presuppositions are diametrically opposed to his own – to the frequent profit of all parties.

His personal and professional aspirations include finding new ways to bring rigorous thinking and praxis in the arts to the conversation/s across religion, philosophy, science and (mental) health.