research agenda


My work is animated by the basic media-theoretical claim, that aesthetic operations and technical procedures in their historical and cultural specificity take priority over the concepts that are taken to be fundamental to a given culture. This justifies and necessitates a rigorous analysis of practices and techniques which make up aesthetic milieus thus avoiding a line of reasoning that starts from universal claims about music, sound, listening or the body.

My research connects music and sound scholarship with ideas from Theravāda Buddhist thought, German media philosophy, and phenomenology. It combines three significant strands of musicological inquiry: the development of Burmese musical drama (pyazat) from the royal patronage of the nineteenth century until the present, a new concern with the conceptual entity of “the human”, and an interest in cultural techniques (Kulturtechniken) of dramatic staging and religious ritual.

education

Dr. of Philosophy
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
MA, Cultural Musicology & Anthropology
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
BA, German studies, Music & Art
Universität Bielefeld

professional
appointments

SENIOR SCIENTIST
Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg
Lecturer in Ethnomusicology
Anton-Bruckner-Privatuniversität Linz
Doctoral Researcher
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Lecturer
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen