Timothy Rommen appointed vice provost for the arts at Penn

Timothy Rommen has been named the University of Pennsylvania’s inaugural vice provost for the arts, effective Jan.1, 2025.

Rommen, who has taught at Penn since 2002, is the Davidson Kennedy Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of music and Africana studies in the School of Arts & Sciences.

In making the announcement Provost John L. Jackson Jr. says “Tim Rommen is the ideal colleague to serve as Penn’s first vice provost for the arts. He is widely respected as a collaborative and consultative leader who is strongly committed to scholarship and teaching, to our diverse arts communities on campus and in Philadelphia, and to the goals of In Principle and Practice, the University’s strategic framework, which he played a key role in developing as a member of the Red and Blue Advisory Committee.”

“I am deeply grateful to him for agreeing to take on this role—and to the consultative committee, chaired by Vice Provost Laura Perna, who helped us to arrive at this outstanding result. Tim’s breadth of experience, insight, and vision will be invaluable assets in helping us to shape the future of the arts at Penn.”

Rommen is the author of “Funky Nassau: Roots, Routes, and Representation in Bahamian Popular Music” (University of California Press, 2011) and “Mek Some Noise: Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad” (University of California Press, 2007), winner of the Alan Merriam Prize for the best book of the year in ethnomusicology, in addition to six edited volumes and dozens of articles and book chapters. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016 for his ongoing work, “Sounding a Borderless Caribbean: The Creole Geographies of Dominican Popular Music,” currently under contract to the University of Chicago Press. In 2023, he received the Ira H. Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching, the highest teaching award in the School of Arts & Sciences.

He has served as chair, director of graduate studies, and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Music, as well as interim chair of the Department of Africana Studies. Rommen is a board member of Penn’s Center for Africana Studies, Greenfield Intercultural Center, Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, and Wolf Humanities Center, among others; and a member of University committees including the Provost’s Arts Advisory Council, Faculty Senate Subcommittee on Research, University Council Committees on Diversity and Equity and Academic and Related Affairs, the School of Arts & Sciences Committee on Undergraduate Education, and College of Arts and Sciences Cultural Diversity in the U.S. Curriculum Committee. He earned a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago, a master of music in musicology from Northwestern University, and a bachelor of arts in music performance/theory from Trinity International University.

“Many thanks to Provost Jackson and the members of the consultative committee,” says Rommen. “Penn is fortunate to have incredibly talented and dedicated arts leaders and arts practitioners whose initiatives and projects consistently remind us of the fundamental value and power of the arts. The arts afford us spaces to engage with the pressing issues of our time—be it climate change, social justice, or the growing impact of AI—and they do so through expressive practices and methods that often directly challenge us to rethink, reimagine, and reframe our understanding of the issues at hand. They also teach us a great deal about what it means to be human, and I look forward to fostering these ways of learning, knowing, doing, and making across Penn’s curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular spaces.

“I am excited to partner with our arts leaders and practitioners, and with the wider Philadelphia arts community, to maximize the impact of their innovative, cross-disciplinary, and experimental work and to imagine new possibilities for the arts here at Penn and beyond,” Rommen says.