Associate Professor Wits School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg

Brett Pyper is an interdisciplinary South African arts practitioner, cultural scholar and former festival director. Since the early 1990s, he has combined critical arts practice with academic study at local, national and international levels. He grew up between Johannesburg and Pretoria/Tshwane, where his background as a classical musician informed his efforts to work with festivals to open up programming at the former performing arts councils as a young arts organiser. He holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Study from Emory University in Atlanta and a PhD in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies from New York University. He was Head of the Wits School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 2014 to 2021, where he is currently an Associate Professor in Curatorial, Public and Visual Cultures. He has served as a mentor for The Festival Academy since 2018.