Willem Peek is a singer and cultural historian. As a Ph.D. student in Historical Musicology and Presidential Scholar at Harvard University, he is interested in early modern connections between music, art, knowledge, and culture. He is pursuing a secondary field in Medieval Studies. He holds B.A. degrees in Philosophy and Art History from the University of Amsterdam, and an M.A. in Cultural, Intellectual, and Visual History from The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study (University of London).

He received his vocal training at the Cathedral Choir School Utrecht in the Netherlands. With the Pulse Ensemble and other groups, he sings and has (co-)directed performances at venues and festivals including the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Song of Our Roots in Jarosław (Poland), the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He is a returning singer with Vox Medicea in the Sacred Music Programme of Fondazione Mascarade in Florence, and performs with other groups occasionally. At St. Paul’s Church at Harvard University, he will lead a weekly Vespers program with Gregorian chant and polyphony, performed directly from historical notation.

He is currently preparing his first publications on Athanasius Kircher and magnetism, on early modern tarantism in Apulia, on musica reservata, and on a fragment from a medieval breviary at Harvard’s Hougthon Library. His work has been generously supported by institutions and funding bodies including Harvard University, the School of Advanced Study in London, the VSBfonds, and Performing Arts Fund NL (FPK, The Netherlands). He has held a research affiliation with the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (2025) and will be affiliated with the Istituto Italiano per gli studi storici in Naples this summer (2026), next to serving as Spring/Summer 2026 International Ph.D. Fellow of the Netherlands Interuniversity Institute for Art History (NIKI) in Florence.

willempeek@g.harvard.edu