Dr Christina Guillaumier is an internationally recognised scholar, pianist and higher education leader based in London. She serves as Director of Research & Global Engagement at the International Centre of Contemporary Music (ICCM), where she leads the Centre’s global research strategy across London and New York. She continues her longstanding affiliation with the Royal College of Music as Reader in Music & Cultural Practice and holds a professorial appointment at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Drama.
Initially trained as a pianist and grounded in the dramatic arts, she bridges performance, research and sector leadership. She is a sought-after writer, teacher and broadcaster whose work spans music history, cultural practice, Slavic and East European studies, conservatoire training and digital pedagogy. Publishing in multiple languages, she is recognised for combining rigorous scholarship with clarity, accessibility and international reach.
An award-winning scholar, Dr Guillaumier is the author of Prokofiev (Reaktion Books, 2024), a major new critical biography that received an Excellence Award from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. As an editor for Bärenreiter, she specialises in critical editions of piano music. She serves as a peer reviewer for leading academic journals and presses and co-convenes the Slavic and East European Music Study Group. Other influential books include The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev, (Boydell & Brewer, 2020) and with Rita McAllister, Rethinking Prokofiev (Oxford, 2020).
Her research has been supported by the AHRC, the European Union, Erasmus and the American Musicological Society. She has held research appointments at Princeton University and the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Her scholarship centres on two interconnected strands: cultural practice and music history; and conservatoire education, pedagogy (including digital innovation) and artistic research.
With two decades of senior leadership experience across the UK and EU conservatoire sectors, Dr Guillaumier is recognised for her expertise in curriculum reform, academic management, governance and research development. She previously served as Head of Undergraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music (2015–2023) and as Head of Contextual Studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
A committed doctoral supervisor, she has guided numerous PhD candidates to successful completion and welcomes enquiries from prospective students working in Slavic and East European music, opera, London cultural politics in the interwar years, piano repertoire and pedagogy, conservatoire training and the classical music profession.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), Dr Guillaumier is an influential advocate for music education and equality of access. Between 2019 and 2025, she served as Trustee of West Sussex Music and subsequently on the West Sussex Music Hub Board, championing inclusive, high-quality music education at regional and national levels. In her role at ICCM, she brings this longstanding commitment to access, excellence and international collaboration to the forefront of contemporary music research, driving globally connected initiatives that unite scholarship, artistic practice and cultural leadership.