Abstract: The purpose of this dissertation is the study of the spectrum and strong decay properties of hybrid mesons within the framework of the constituent gluon model. Hybrid mesons are mesons composed of a quark-antiquark pair plus gluonic degrees of freedom. A detailed study of hybrid mesons, besides being interesting in its own merit, can offer a window into the role of gluonic degrees of freedom in non-perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) - a question that still remains unanswered after over fifty years from its development.

Different versions of constituent gluon models have been developed in the last five decades and they have recently gained much support from lattice gauge theory studies. Our model assumes that the gluon is a constituent particle with specific quantum numbers. The basis for the model is the Quantum Chromodynamics Hamiltonian in Coulomb Gauge, which leads to an instantaneous Coulomb interaction between the constituents.

Firstly, we compute a spin-averaged spectrum of charmonium hybrids (hybrids made of charm quarks), for which there is extensive lattice data with which to compare our results. As a check for the robustness of the model, we also calculate spin-averaged energies for conventional heavy quarkonium, which can be directly compared to the available experimental data.

Secondly, we compute hadronic decays of charmonium hybrids and again compare our results to those of the lattice. Lastly, we calculate hadronic decays of light hybrids (hybrids made of $u$, $d$ and $s$ quarks). In the case of light hybrids, lattice data is now supplemented by a scant but growing body of experimental results which include the isovector $\pi_{1}(1600)$ and the recently discovered isoscalar $\eta_{1}(1885)$, both light hybrid candidates with $J^{PC}=1^{-+}$.