September 9, 2026
Matthew Jones, PhD, has spent his career moving between the classroom, scholarship, performance, and academic administration. Now, he is bringing that broad range of experience to the Butler School of Music as its new Assistant Director for Faculty and Staff Administration.
Jones joins Butler from Oklahoma City University, where he served as an Assistant Professor of Musicology. In his new role, he hopes to use his firsthand experience as a faculty member to help support the people who make up the Butler community.
“One of the things that I bring to this position is an intimate awareness of what faculty go through in the promotion and tenure process,” Jones says.
That perspective comes from experience. Over the course of his career, Jones has held both tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions, taught at the university level, conducted extensive scholarly research, and worked in the performing arts. He understands that every faculty member’s experience within an institution can be different.
“I hope that the fact that I have been through that process will make my office seem more open and friendly to faculty,” he says.
For Jones, that openness is central to how he approaches administration.
“I am a big believer in spending time with people and getting to know them,” he says.
He earned his undergraduate degree in piano and voice from the University of Georgia before spending three years teaching choir in public schools. He eventually returned to school with the goal of becoming a music therapist, hoping to bring music therapy into the public-school classroom.
While pursuing that degree, however, Jones took a graduate musicology course on Cuban music. The course was taught by Susan Thomas, who was then a professor at the University of Georgia and is now the Director of the Butler School of Music.
The class prompted Jones to reconsider his career path.
“I met with her at some point during the semester, and she said something very encouraging about my writing,” Jones recalls. “She also suggested the degree in musicology might be a better fit than music therapy.”
Jones took her advice. He pursued a master’s degree in musicology and eventually earned his doctorate from the University of Virginia.
His doctoral dissertation, How to Make Music in an Epidemic: Hearing AIDS, 1981–1996, examined how music responded to the AIDS crisis during the 1980s and 1990s.
That research became the foundation for an extensive body of scholarship, including two books.
His first book, Love Don't Need a Reason: The Life and Music of Michael Callen, examines the life and music of American singer, songwriter, composer, author and AIDS activist Michael Callen, who became an important figure in the AIDS activism movement before his death from AIDS-related illness in 1993.
His second book, How to Make Music in an Epidemic: Popular Music Making During the AIDS Crisis, 1981–1996, explores how popular musicians and music videos responded to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Jones continues to pursue research in this area. He is currently working with Butler alumnus Thomas Kurtz, now a professor at the University of San Francisco, on an edited collection of essays featuring perspectives from activists and academics on the response to the AIDS crisis. He is also working on a new book examining large-scale choral works written for men's choruses, particularly requiems written in response to the deaths of people who died of AIDS.
Jones’ experience extends well beyond musicology. He has served as Artistic Director of Pride Chorus Houston and has held positions including Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Miami University and Lecturer at the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia.
Those experiences have given him a perspective that he believes will be valuable in his new position at Butler.
Rather than approaching administration as something separate from faculty life, Jones wants to make his office a place where faculty and staff feel comfortable seeking help, asking questions or simply stopping by.
He also hopes to bring a personal, rather than overly institutional, approach to the job.
“I am a big believer in spending time with people and getting to know them,” he says.
There is one thing Jones is still getting used to: Austin.
Having recently arrived in town, he describes himself as “directionally challenged” and is still learning his way around both the seemingly endless hallways of the Butler School of Music and the streets of his new city.
Fortunately, finding his office is easy.
Located on the third floor of the Butler School of Music, Jones’ office is the one with the shades to the hallway left open. He welcomes colleagues to stop by, introduce themselves and say hello. So stop in and say hi to Matthew Jones our new Assistant Director for Faculty and Staff Administration.