Malcolm Gillies recently retired after seven years as a university president in London. He holds doctorates in music from the University of London and the University of Melbourne. During 1999-2001 he was president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and during 2010-14 also president of the university advocacy body, London Higher, writing a monthly column in Times Higher Education. 

As a musician, he has authored or edited over a dozen books in twentieth-century music analysis and history, many about Bela Bartok and Percy Grainger, and also been general editor of Oxford University Press’s Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure and Interpretation since 1997. For some years he was music and opera critic for The Australian. 

Professor Gillies’ current musical interests include relating composer correspondence more closely to analysis, making scholarly editions more accessible to performers, and reasserting the value of music criticism.