Profile

This page is divided into the following sections:

  1. Academic profile
  2. Outlook
  3. Principal academic positions held
  4. Academic credentials and honours
  5. Areas of research and academic interest
  6. Postgraduate research supervision
  7. Research outputs: publications and creative works
  8. Religious offices and appointments
  9. Other honours and awards

More information about the major areas of my career can be found at these links:

1. Academic profile

My academic work centres on the three areas of music, education and the Church.

In my library at home, May 2022

I am an award-winning classical pianist who has specialized in bringing neglected music of the Romantic era to public notice via my own CD label and subsequent online releases. Performing in the UK and continental Europe, my experience includes solo recitals, concertos and chamber music, and premières of both historical and contemporary works. I was the first to record several unfinished piano sonatas by Beethoven and have also made the first recordings of works by Mendelssohn, Alkan, Eduard Franck, Theodor Kirchner and Walter Niemann. Having graduated with First Class Honours as the top pianist of my year from London’s Royal College of Music, I pursued postgraduate research there and at Cambridge, and subsequently took up a Junior Fellowship at the RCM.

I have taught in secondary, further and higher education both in Britain and overseas and in 2003 co-founded European-American University (Bunyoro-Kitara (Uganda); Florida (USA); France), which I continue to lead as Chancellor today. EAU is a private-sector humanitarian university that offers bespoke professional education for high achievers, chiefly in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015, I also took on responsibility as Chancellor for the Western Orthodox University (Florida, USA), a small religious university which operates in association with EAU. Since 2013, I have been International President of OXCEL – The Oxford Centre for Leadership, a British professional association that trains and assesses leaders in business and related areas around the world.

I have also maintained a busy consultancy in comparative international education since 2005, chiefly for the benefit of law firms in the United States preparing immigration petitions. I am Senior Consultant Evaluator and Director of Expert Opinion Services for Career Consulting International (Florida, USA) and regularly consult on the equivalency of international credentials and their role in immigration processes of the USA up to and including appellate level. I also regularly evaluate foreign credentials for the United States Armed Forces.

Following eighteen years of lay service in the Church, I undertook ministerial training and was ordained to the major orders in 2006 in the communion of the Apostolic Episcopal Church, in which church I was subsequently app0inted bishop in 2008 and elected Primate in 2015. Since 2011, my ministerial work has been organized under the Abbey-Principality of San Luigi, an ecumenical foundation that includes Western Orthodox, Traditional Catholic and Continuing Anglican jurisdictions and embraces churches and Orders of Chivalry that have an international membership.

2. Outlook

Born and raised in Enfield, North London, my studies and work have brought me into close contact with people from many different countries and backgrounds. I have had a particularly close working relationship with western Africa, with valued colleagues in Nigeria and other countries in the region, and have also developed strong professional contacts in Latin America and the United States. Despite these factors, I am not an internationalist, but instead a Romantic nationalist. I believe strongly in the nation as the foundation for society, and that the promotion of mutual respect for the traditions and established ways of life of the different peoples of the world is the path towards lasting peace and understanding between them. The destruction of these distinguishing characteristics by globalization is something that I oppose, and that I see as an attempt to bring people to a common denominator rather than understanding them as individuals within a wide range of personal and societal contexts.

3. Principal academic positions held

  • Chancellor and Richard Williams Morgan Professor of History and Education at European-American University (Bunyoro-Kitara (Uganda); Florida (USA); France) (2007-).
    Co-founder of the University in 2003. Responsible for establishing a network of over twenty affiliated campuses, principally located in sub-Saharan Africa, which deliver programmes leading to University awards, targeting principally mid-career professionals seeking a bespoke educational experience, as well as offering programmes via correspondence-based distance learning. The overall network of tutorial and examining expertise now embraces a family of many hundreds. Overall responsibility for all aspects of the University’s operations, both academic and administrative. The University celebrated its 20th year in 2023.
  • Chancellor and Supreme Head of The Western Orthodox University (Florida, USA) (2015-)
    Overall academic and administrative responsibility for this religious university of the Catholicate of the West (see Religious offices and appointments), operated as a sister institution to European-American University with which it shares faculty and resources. The University celebrated its 75th year in 2020.
  • International President, OXCEL – The Oxford Centre for Leadership (2013-)
  • Full Professor in the International Program, Universidad Empresarial de Costa Rica (2014-)
  • Senior Consultant Evaluator and Director of Expert Opinion Services, Career Consulting International (Florida, USA) (2005-)
    Over 5,000 expert opinions on international credentials prepared for submission before the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services of the Department of Homeland Security; successful appeals of cases; working closely with leading immigration law firms, often in an advisory role.
  • Geoffrey Parsons Junior Fellow, Royal College of Music, United Kingdom (1997-98)
    Presented to HRH the Prince of Wales upon election.

  • Various part-time and temporary lecturing positions in British and European universities and conservatoires, and part-time and full-time teaching and administrative positions in British independent schools and further education institutions (1997-2005)

4. Academic credentials and honours

I was the first person in my family to attend a selective school and to go to university. At The Latymer School, Edmonton (which was then the top co-educational grammar school in the country), I was a Latymer Foundation Music Scholar and eleven times school prizewinner. Aged fourteen, I won a Local Authority Junior Exhibition Award to the Royal College of Music, London (RCM), where I studied piano. I continued my studies at undergraduate level, graduating with First Class Honours in the Bachelor of Music degree as the top pianist of my year, and was the winner of twelve prizes and awards. After postgraduate study at the RCM (resulting in the award of the degree of Master of Music in Performance Studies: Applied Research) and Christ’s College, Cambridge, I was elected to a Junior Fellowship at the RCM, and as a result was presented to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales (now King Charles III).

By the time I wished to continue my postgraduate studies, the British academic establishment had ceased to be open to someone of my traditionalist and conservative views, and was dominated by the ideas of the authoritarian Left. My path through mainstream education had also been challenging because of my Asperger’s Syndrome, and I was now seeking educational outlets that were more accommodating towards me as an autistic person.

Consequently, my subsequent education was mostly undertaken in the international programmes of overseas private universities which enjoyed greater ideological independence and offered more acceptance of neurodiversity; initially in Denmark and France, but later also in Africa and Latin America, where I have studied via distance learning. These studies, all of which have been self-funded, have represented the broadening of my academic interests to embrace areas including business, law, education, history and theology.

5. Areas of research and academic interest

  • Neglected and lesser-known composers and performers of the Romantic era, including Walter Niemann, Theodor Kirchner and Charles-Valentin Alkan.
  • Piano performance
  • Piano performance history from the nineteenth-century to the present day
  • International educational credentials and their equivalency
  • History of distance education and experiential assessment within the university
  • APL/APEL/VAE jury member and experienced assessor
  • History, ecclesiology and mission of reactionary, traditionalist and progressive churches descending from the First Vatican Council and from Orthodox missions to the West, particularly the work and ministry of Arnold Harris Mathew and Joseph-René Vilatte
  • Western esotericism, particularly the interface of esotericism with the independent sacramental churches.
  • Legal and historical issues relating to sovereignty, nobility and chivalry.

6. Postgraduate research supervision

  • A few of the topics I have supervised include:
    • Doctorates: “The Power of Myth and Story in a Person’s Becoming” (Doctor of Theology); “Epiphanies…Shining a Light on the Church’s Year” (Doctor of Theology); “The recognition of the Old Roman Catholic Church by the Roman Catholic Church” (Doctor of Theology); “An analysis of forward-looking projects to improve the living conditions of children and adolescents in South Africa” (Doctor of Education); Musical composition and performance (Doctor of Music).
    • Masters: “Discrimination and family values concerning the Romas/Causes of migrations/Importance of music in everyday life/The possibility to live together/Testimonials” (Master of Arts); “Messiah: Evolution, Expansion and Performance Practice” (Master of Arts)
  • Member of all doctoral and masters and VAE examining committees ex officio, European-American University and The Western Orthodox University, examining portfolios and theses both as a subject examiner and as panel convenor.
  • Portfolio examiner at all levels
  • Examining at higher doctorate level for degrees including Doctor of Letters, and of published work for the PhD by Published Work.
  • Examining for EAU and WOU alongside external specialists from, inter alia, the University of Brighton, University of Manchester, and Richmond, The American International University in London

7. Research outputs: publications and creative works

8. Religious offices and appointments

9. Other honours and awards (academic awards and honours are listed above)