Henry Stobart is Professor in Music/Ethnomusicology in the Music Department of Royal Holloway, he is the founder and co-ordinator of the UK Latin American Music Seminar, and was co-editor of the journal Ethnomusicology Forum (2019-22). He studied tuba and recorder at Birmingham Conservatoire, performed with a number of baroque ensembles, and taught music in several schools, before completing a PhD (1996) at St John's College, Cambridge focused on the music of a Quechua speaking herding and agricultural community of Northern Potosí, Bolivia. Following a research fellowship at Darwin College Cambridge he was appointed as the first lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Royal Holloway in 1999. His books include Heritage Fever: Law and Cultural Politics in a Decolonizing State co-authored with Michelle Bigenho (Oxford University Press 2025), Music and the Poetics of Production in the Bolivian Andes (Ashgate 2006), and the edited volumes Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media, co-edited with Thomas Hilder and Shzr Ee Tan (Rochester/Boydell and Brewer 2017), The New (Ethno)musicologies, (Scarecrow, 2008), Knowledge and Learning in the Andes: Ethnographic Perspectives, co-edited with Rosaleen Howard (Liverpool University Press 2002), and the interdisciplinary volume Sound, co-edited with Patricia Kruth (Cambridge University Press, 2000). Henry was co-founder and active until the early 2000s as a professional performer with the Early/World Music ensemble SIRINU, which gave hundreds of concerts, recorded over 7 CDs, and appeared on many European radio networks following their first Early Music Network tour in 1992.

After writing extensively on rural musical practices in the Bolivian Andes, Henry's research has gone on to focus on indigenous music video (VCD) production, media ‘piracy’, and then on the cultural politics of this region - especially regarding intellectual property and heritage making. Together with Michelle Bigenho (Colgate University, USA), he co-directed a National Science Foundation funded project Cultural Property, Creativity, and Indigeneity in Bolivia in collaboration with Juan Carlos Cordero (Bolivia) and Bernardo Rozo (Bolivia). This Bolivia-based workshop aimed to facilitate discussions about alternatives to existing intellectual property regimes. He has co-written several articles and a book on music and dance heritage declaration issues with Michelle Bigenho with whom he was awarded an ACLS Colloborative Fellowship for the project Beyond Indigenous Heritage Paradoxes in Evo Morales' Bolivia.   

The courses he teaches at Royal Holloway include Introduction to World Music; Creative Ensemble Performance (first year); Music of the Andes; Music of the Mediterranean - Oral Traditions; Ensemble Performance in Andean Music; Music, Environment and Ecology (second and third year options); Techniques in Ethnomusicology; Documenting Performance (MMus). He also runs an Andean band and is active in promoting Early Music performance in the department.