Cynthia M. Grund contemplated a career as a professional accompanist (piano) before deciding to embark upon an academic career which has included mathematics, logic, formal philosophy, aesthetics and culture studies. Grund received her training in the United States (BA, Bryn Mawr College), Sweden (ABD, Uppsala U.) and Finland (FT/fil.dr., U. of Tampere). She defended her Finnish doctoral thesis Constitutive Counterfactuality: The Logic of Interpretation in Metaphor and Music (Copenhagen: Askeladden) in 1997. She is an Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy, Education and the Study of Religions (IFPR) at The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) – Odense, and in 2006  was named Research Director (forskningsleder) for The Aesthetics of Music and Sound – Cross-Disciplinary Interplay between Humaniora, Technology and Musical Practice, http://soundmusicresearch.org.  In 2007 Grund founded the NordPlus-supported Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics, NNIMIPA; http://www.soundmusicresearch.org/NNIMIPA.html. Grund was chief applicant for NTSMB: Netværk for Tværvidenskabelige Studier af Musik og Betydning/ Network for Cross-Disciplinary Studies of Music and Meaning  http://www.ntsmb.dk, which was started in 2001 with a grant from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities (DRCH) and has been its director since. She also is a founder and the Editor-in-Chief of the DRCH-supported JMM: The Journal of Music and Meaning http://www.musicandmeaning.net.

Grund was an originator of the DRCH-funded research network Metaphor, Culture and Cognition 1995-1997. She was associated with the NOS-H (Nordisk samarbeidsnemd for humanistisk forskning)-sponsored project Interpretation, Literature and Identity - Approaches to the Methodology of Interpretation at the rank of Assistant Professor (Forskningsadjunkt) 1996-1998. Grund is currently active within the international conference organizations CMMR (Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval), ICMC (International Computer Music Conference), and ICAD (International Conference on Auditory Display) and has recently been active in ICMS (International Conference on Musical Signification) and ISMIR (International Conference on Music Information Retrieval) as well. Her publications include work in philosophy of music, logic and meaning; work investigating the potential for research in information technology to revolutionize musical aesthetics; and work which examines the manner in which philosophy interfaces with popular culture

Grund leads the Philosophy Meets Popular Culture Initiative (http://www.philpopculture.dk). Interested in how the immaterialist philosophy of Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) might have relevance regard to topics involving perception and virtual reality, during July 2007 and 2008 Grund was Scholar in Residence at Whitehall, Berkeley’s home 1729-1731 in Middletown, Rhode Island, and serves in this capacity once again in August 2009.