Meet our researchers - School of Music, Theatre and Art

Sam de Boise

What is your research about?

There are three different areas in my research. The first is music and emotions, and to what extent emotional experiences of music are shaped by social factors. The second concerns issues of gender equality in relation to various aspects of music creation and music consumption. The third, most recent research focus, is about the role of music in right-wing extremist radicalization. Specifically, my research looks at how contemporary right-wing extremist movements use music as a tool to both recruit members and spread their messages

How do you view the relevance of your research?

My research focuses on questions of how and why people engage with music. As such, it is relevant for understanding why and how people are musical. However, even though music is important, I also want to explore how it contributes to inequality and gender imbalance. It is important to understand the mechanisms through which people are excluded from making music and the potential harm that music can cause in counteracting such tendencies.

Ester Lebedinski

Ester Lebedinski is a music historian, primarily working with 17th-century music history in England. Ester is particularly interested in how different people used music in various historical contexts, what happens when a certain type of music is moved from one context to another – for example, an Italian cantata performed in London, or a Purcell song that becomes a broadside ballad – and how music interacts with other social processes.

Nadia Moberg

What is your research about?

I defended my thesis in 2022 titled Dis/harmony: (Re)construction of Higher Music Education in Classical Music. The research I conduct focuses on power relations and perceptions of music in both music education and other musical contexts. My primary focus is on applying critical perspectives to the relationship between music and humans, regardless of the context. Ultimately, my research aims to make visible assumptions, practices, and values that contribute to maintaining and reproducing structures of exclusion, oppression, and social injustices.

How do you view the relevance of your research?

By studying music and humans from critical perspectives, I aim to make existing power relations visible in various musical contexts, but also to open up for alternative ways of thinking and acting. Challenging established power relations and questioning what is taken for granted is important for creating opportunities to promote greater justice.

Ulrik Volgsten

Ulrik Volgsten is professor in Musicology. His research is concerned with musical communication in different media. In addition to the conceptual history of Western music (composer, work, listener) and musical aesthetics, an important area of research has been the role of vitality affects in music, which Volgsten has pioneered and developed in a number of publications since the late 1990s. Beginning in 2021 Volgsten is leading, together with Benedetta Zucconi, the RJ-funded project ”The past as repeatable presence: How phonography changed music from ephemeral event to ever accessible object (a comparison between Sweden and Italy during the interwar years) ”.

Volgsten teaches at both graduate and post graduate levels. Courses include music history, philosophy and aesthetics of music, culture theory, scientific theory and method.

Jon Mikkel Broch Ålvik

What is your research about?

In my research, I address questions of music and identity, particularly in the context of Nordic popular music. I am interested in how musical taste is negotiated and how genre and language create frameworks for how music is performed and consumed. The concept of authenticity plays a central role in this, both in relation to theatricality and staging, as well as gender and sexuality, and the relationship between aesthetics and technology, particularly how recording technology affects the listener’s relationship to voices.

How do you view the relevance of your research?

Music is a formidable arena for the creation of personal identity, both for artists and listeners, and my research aims to offer tools to investigate how artists negotiate their persona within the frameworks of genre, technology, and gender. In my research, I contribute to a critical perspective on ideas of the presumptively genuine and honest within music, and explore how the foundations of music's social status are negotiated, established, and naturalized through industry mechanisms and media discourses.

Rebecca Dobre Billström

Rebecca Dobre Billström is a senior lecturer in music education. Rebecca’s background is in music education and gender studies, and she defended her thesis in musicology at Örebro University in 2022 with the thesis Feminist musical engagements. The struggle against gender inequalities in music-making practices. Based on interviews with musicians from various music environments engaging in affecting change, who start out from a gendered perspective, the thesis explores the feminist political potential of both music-making and organisational work to combat inequalities in relation to music.

In her current research, Rebecca is interested in freelance musicians' working life and how the interplay between gendered, racialised and class-based power differentials shapes musicians' opportunities to work and maintain a career in Swedish music scenes.

Eva Georgii-Hemming

What is your research about?

My research is about the power relations that exist in music education, music creation, and the use of music. Music is a source of joy, comfort, and energy. Music can create unity between people, nations, and cultures. But it also means that there are norms that create boundaries and maintain differences. Access to education, jobs, and stages is limited by notions of class, gender, ethnicity, age, and tradition. Social structures restrict who feels at home at a basement concert or at the opera. There are also clear hierarchies between different music genres and professions within the music world. It is these conditions and injustices that my research addresses.

How do you view the relevance of your research?

Whether we are talking about music education, professional musicians, producers, and troubadours, or amateurs singing in choirs, it is necessary to critically examine the relationship between music and humans. We need to make visible the norms and unjust conditions that make the music world, in all its forms, exclusive. We need to challenge established ways of thinking, actions, and power structures. An important way to contribute to change is to discuss the results of my research with students who are studying to become teachers, musicians, producers, or cultural strategists. When they enter the professional world with the ability to question what is taken for granted, challenge, and act differently, it helps create new, more just practices.

Annika Danielsson

Teaches and supervises in music education and academic writing.

Joshua Han

Joshua Han is a guest researcher in Musicology. He has undertaken cross-disciplinary research across a range of fields and areas including linguistics, social semiotics, multimodality, critical discourse analysis, musicology and social media. He was awarded his PhD in music semiotics from the University of New South Wales in 2022. He has teaching experience in visual communication and social media studies, and has also worked extensively as a researcher in discourse analysis.

Joshua’s current research project is entitled “Decolonising Music Theory” and is funded by Wenner-Gren Foundations. The aim of this project is to critically examine and work towards challenging the hegemonic position that western classical music theory holds in the field of music theory. Further, it investigates alternative music theoretical perspectives from diverse musical practices. Methods from critical discourse analysis and multimodal social semiotics are applied and applications of the research findings to music education are also investigated.

Nichelle Johansson-Dahl

What is your research about?

In my dissertation project, I discuss the shaping of values by contemporary professional musicians within Swedish folk music.

Moa Fröding

What is your research about?

My dissertation project aims to shed light on power relations and structures within Swedish dance band culture. I raise questions regarding hierarchies, inequalities, and power dynamics. I focus on the media portrayal, the dancing audience, and how general participation in dance band culture is conditioned.

How do you view the relevance of your research?

For a long time, dance band culture has held a low cultural status, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people participate in both the major dance band weeks and engage at the local level. I want to understand why, and I believe it is important to investigate issues of power in a culture that has often been looked down upon. My dissertation project is relevant for gaining a better understanding of Swedish dance band culture and its place in society, as it is a culture that has often been excluded due to its low cultural status.