Matthew Hamilton
Programme:
Music - PhD/MSc by Research
Start date:
November 2022
Mode of study:
Full time
Research title:
Open Methods For Digital Conservation Of Musical Instruments
Biography
Matthew is a third-year PhD candidate at the Università di Bologna, currently hosted by the University of Edinburgh through the Una Europa Joint Doctoral Programme in Cultural Heritage.
His research centres on interaction with digital musical cultural heritage, with particular alignment to the FAIR principles and the broader open science movement. The doctoral project examines the digital conservation pipeline as applied to historical musical instruments, exploring strategies for preserving not only heritage objects themselves but also the digital tools and environments developed during the conservation process.
He holds a BMus in Music Technology and an MSc in Acoustics and Music Technology from the University of Edinburgh. His master’s thesis investigated creative applications of coupled finite difference plate and string models.
Alongside his research, he is interested in developing effective pedagogical tools and formats for educating artists in the use of digital technologies. This interest is informed by professional experience as a technician at Edinburgh College of Art and as a Software Carpentries instructor.
Research interests
- Computer Programming and Electronics Pedagogy in Arts and Humanities
- Creative Electronics and Computer Programming
- FAIR Research in Digital Humanities
- Software Sustainability
- Open Science
- Digital Musical Cultural Heritage
- Digital Signal Processing
Conference Publications
The interfacing with digital musical cultural heritage is discussed in the papers:
- Matthew Hamilton, Michele Ducceschi, Roberto Livi, Catalina Vicens, and Andrew McPherson. “Augmentation of a Historical Harpsichord Keyboard Replica for Haptic-Enabled Interaction in Museum Exhibitions”. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. Ed. by Doga Cavdir and Florent Berthaut. Canberra, Australia, June 2025, pp. 424–431. View the paper here.
- Matthew Hamilton, Michele Ducceschi, Alexis Mousseau, and Sebastian Duran. “Magpie: A Web-Based, Open-Source Framework For Plate Vibration Analysis”. In: INTER-NOISE and NOISE-CON Congress and Conference Proceedings 270 (Oct. 2024), pp. 5918–5929. doi: 10.3397/IN_2024_3662
Novel applications of musical interfaces and bespoke synthesis algorithms is explored in:
- Matthew Hamilton, Riccardo Russo, Craig Webb, and Michele Ducceschi. “A Two-Register Haptic Interface For Articulated Control Of Harpsichord Physical Models”. In: Proceedings of Forum Acusticum 2025. Malaga, Spain, June 2025