Team Austria
Prof. Dr. André Doehring, musicologist and sociologist, is professor for jazz and popular music research at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz (Austria) and head of the Institute for Jazz Research. His research and publications focus on socio-historical, cultural, political and media aspects of jazz and popular music as well as musical analysis. He co-edits the publication series Jazzforschung / Jazz Research and Beiträge zur Jazzforschung / Studies in Jazz Research. Contact via email
Dr. Kai Ginkel is post-doc researcher at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Austria) for the project “Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe”. He studied sociology, psychology, and political science and wrote his dissertation on a praxeological approach to sound at KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Transcript 2017). Main research areas include qualitative methodologies, popular music, sound, and theories of practice. Contact via email
Team Germany
Prof. Dr. Mario Dunkel is Juniorprofessor (assistant professor) of music education at the Music Department of the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany. He holds a PhD in American studies from TU Dortmund University. His main research areas are music and politics, the history and practice of jazz, as well as transcultural music pedagogy. He is the principal investigator of the European research project “Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe” (2019-2022, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation). Contact via email
Anna-Lena Engelke is studying for a Master of Education in Music and German and a Master in Musicology at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. She has been working as a student assistant for this project since 2019.
Dr. Reinhard Kopanski (*1978), Master of Arts degree in Musicology, Politics and Media Studies in Bonn, graduated 2012, thereafter lecturer in Bonn. 2014–2021 research associate at the University of Siegen. PhD in musicology in 2019. Since June 2021 coordinator of this research project. Research fields: music and politics/ideology, metal music, music and technology. Associated member of the Collaborative Research Center “Transformations of the Popular” at the University of Siegen (funded by the DFG). He is on the executive board of the International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS). Contact via email
Dr. Anna Schwenk is a habilitation candidate & postdoctoral researcher in the project “African Music and Politics: Negotiations of Violence in South African Popular Music.” Within the project, she is primarily responsible for the empirical investigation and theorization of the question how political violence is negotiated in and through popular music in South Africa. The project, which is part of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) “Transformations of the Popular” at the University of Siegen, is funded by the DFG, Germany’s major self-governing organization for science and research.
Before joining the CRC, she coordinated as a postdoc researcher in the transnational project “Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe”. Remaining associated with this project allows her to explore the commonalities between political uses of music in most different contexts, be it pandemic-skeptical protests in Germany or Fees Must Fall mobilizations in South Africa. Anna Schwenck received a PhD in sociology from Humboldt University Berlin. Based on a combination of participant observation, in-depth interviews as well as online and archival research on young leadership summer camps organized by the Russian state, she theorized how authoritarianism and neoliberalism may combine in flexible authoritarian regimes. She received a MA in Social Sciences from Humboldt University Berlin, and a BA in Cultural Studies from Viadrina European University, Frankfurt (Oder). Contact via email
Simon Wehber (*1989), Master of Education in Music, English and Mathematics, graduated 2017. Since 2017 research assistant at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. Working in this research project since May 2021. Research fields: music education, focus on didactics and music teaching at secondary schools. Contact via email
Team Hungary
Assoc.-Prof. Dr. Emília Barna is a sociologist and popular music scholar, Associate Professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Her main research areas include the music industries and digitization, popular music and gender, cultural labour, and music and politics. She has co-edited Made in Hungary: Studies in Popular Music (2017, Routledge) and Popular Music, Technology, and the Changing Media Ecosystem: From Cassettes to Stream (2020, Palgrave). Contact via email
Dr. Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják is a sociologist-anthropologist. She is a postdoctoral researcher in the European project “Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe” at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. She completed a Cultural Studies PhD programme at the University of Pécs. Her main research areas are Hungarian nationalism, kin-state politics in CCE and everyday nationalism. Contact via email
Team Italy
Prof. Dr. Manuela Caiani is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. She has received her national Italian ‘Abilitazione’ for full professorship in Political Science and Political Sociology, in 2017. Since 2019 she is Convenor of the Standing Group ‘Political Participation and Social Movement’, Italian Association for Political Science (SISP). Her research interests focus on: populism (left wing and right wing); right wing extremism and the Internet; the radical right; social movements and political mobilisation; Europeanization/transnationalisation of social movements; qualitative methods of social research (focus groups; interviews; frame analysis, social network analysis, etc.). She has directed and collaborated in a number of international projects on topics relating to: populism, social movements and Europeanization, radical right mobilization and extremism (online), disengagement from terrorism (Volkswagen Stiftung; Europe for Citizens Program;FP4, FP5, FP7; PRIN; Marie Curie; Research Grant Jubilaumsfonds, ONB; Doctoral TRA Fellowship, START Center, 2009, University of Maryland). She published in, among others, the following journals: WEP, EJPR, Mobilization, Acta Politica, European Union Politics, South European Society and Politics, RISP and for the following publishers: Oxford University press, Ashgate, Palgrave. Contact via email
Dr. Enrico Padoan. (PhD, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) is a post-doc researcher at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence. His main research interests focus on populism, party organisation, labour politics, and the relationship between populism and pop culture. He is the author of Anti-Neoliberal Populisms in Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2020) and co-author of a monograph on the 2018 Chilean protests (Cile in rivolta, Castelvecchi, 2020). His works have been pub-lished at Government and Opposition, Politics, Javnost, Revista Española de Sociología, Iberoamericana and Partecipazione e Conflitto, among other journals. His monograph Il Movimento 5 Stelle in prospettiva comparata (in Italian) is forthcoming with Mimesis. Contact via email
Team Sweden
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Melanie Schiller is assistant professor of media studies and popular music at the dept. for Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), and the author of Soundtracking Germany – Popular Music and National Identity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018 and 2020). Schiller is on the executive board and national representative of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) Benelux branch, and was a member of the academic advisory committee of the German Society for Popular Music Studies (GfPM). Her research interests include popular music, popular culture and politics, German popular music, national identity and nationalism, and transmedia storytelling, amongst others. Contact via email
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3708-0895
Our Network
We would like to thank
Dr. Martin Niederauer (co-applicant)
Kira Ayyadi
Michael Colborne
Dr. Péter Csigó
Dr. Thorsten Hindrichs
Prof. Dr. John Street
Dr. Mary N. Taylor
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Benjamin Teitelbaum
for support and feedback.