Christophe Pirenne, doctor of musicology from the University of Liège, has specialized in the study of 20^thcentury popular music. His main field of research is what is called progressive rock, which  he approached in his doctoral thesis that gave birth to the book English progressive rock (from 1966 to 1977)/Le rock “progressif” anglais (1966 à 1977) (Honoré Champion, 2005). He also studied what is called cosmic rock at the  Forschungszentrum Populäre Musik of the Von Humboldt University (Berlin) thanks to a grant from the Von Humboldt Foundation. He has just published a vast synthesis of the history of rock music (Fayard, 2011).
Christophe Pirenne teaches music history and cultural policies at the University of Liège and at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve.