Dr. Alexandra Huang-Kokina

Dr. Alexandra Huang-Kokina is an academic, pianist and creative director working at the intersections of music, literature and new media cultures. She holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where she explored the dynamic relationship between piano playing and novel writing.

Her research is informed by her liberal arts education and practical experience as a music performer. Her current interests include innovation in classical music and opera, AI-augmented creativity in the performing arts, and performance studies more broadly.

Currently based in the U.K. and Sweden, Alexandra is an incoming Bicentenary Fellow in Music at the University of Manchester (starting October 2025), and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Aesthetics and Business Creativity (ABC) at Lund University. She is also a visiting fellow at Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at UCL and a research associate at the Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture and Society (CDCS). In 2024-25, she held a Digital Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. Her forthcoming academic book, The Musical Performativity of Twentieth-Century Piano Novels, is under contract with Palgrave Macmillan.

Alexandra's musical life has been a vibrant fusion of artistic disciplines and digital experimentation, bridging cultural traditions with new media practices. Her work in digital creativity breathes new life into her performance practice, exemplified by the 'Creative Digital Dynamics' chamber concert series and her immersive opera project ('OperAI'). These initiatives aim to create playful, inclusive experience and steer opera and classical music towards today's digital entertainment cultures. Alexandra's first opera, Yūrei: Ghost of the AI Empire, premiered in Edinburgh in March 2025, with the Swedish première to follow in October 2025.

As a creative director, Alexandra is passionate about talent management and performance curation. She co-founded Operactive Arts in 2024—an arts management company that reimagines both the artistic and business sides of classical music, while championing emerging musicians, creative technologists, and interdisciplinary artists through opportunities that let their talent shine.