MMRC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Professor Emerita at New Jersey City University
- Visiting Professor
Adelaida Reyes was Professor Emerita in the New Jersey City University (formerly Jersey City State College) from 1997. Before that she worked as professor of music/ethnomusicology at New Jersey City University (1987-1997), lecturer at Columbia University Department of Music (1976-1986), and as a faculty member at St. Scholastica's College Department of Music (Manila, Philippines; 1951-1964). From 2011-2021, she was vice-president of the Study Group on Music and Minorities of the International Council for Traditional Music.
She completed her studies for B. Music, at St. Scholastica's College, Manila, Philippines (1951), M. Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, N. Y. (1972) and Ph.D. (Musicology/Ethnomusicology), Columbia University, New York, N.Y. (1975), with the dissertation thesis The Role of Music in the Interaction of Black Americans and Hispanos in New York City's East Harlem, which was nominated for the Bancroft Dissertation Prize in 1975.
Adelaida Reyes has been a visiting professor in many universities across the USA, UK and Europe, such as Charles University, Humanities Faculty (Prague), at the Universities of New York and Columbia (University Department of Music) as well as in Juilliard School. She was also a Senior Research Fellow, Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford, UK (1996, Michaelmas 1993, Trinity term; 1990, Michaelmas term).
Besides that, Adelaida Reyes was also a coordinator at the Faculty Seminar for Studies in Ethnicity (Title IX, Ethnic Heritage U.S. government grant), Jersey City State College (1979-1980), acting director (sabbatical replacement) at the Center for Studies in Ethnomusicology, Columbia University (1979-1980), and a member of the National Humanities Faculty: Ethnic and cross-cultural studies for High School and College curricula (1975-1983).
In her other professional capacities she was also a Fulbright panelist (2013-2016), a Fulbright specialist at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic), Humanities Faculty (Fall semester, 2012), member of the Editorial Board, University of Putri Malaysia Book Series in Music Research, Kuala Lumpur (2013-2015) and member of the Editorial Board (English edition): Lide Mesta/Urban People, Journal of the Humanities Faculty, Charles University (from 2008).
Adelaida Reyes has received several academic honors and awards, such as the Lifetime achievement award, Society for Ethnomusicology (Mid-Atlantic Chapter), Fulbright fellowship at the Charles University Humanities Faculty, Prague (2012), residency, Bellagio Study and Conference Center (Rockefeller Foundation, Italy, International Association for Studies of Popular Music (US) Book Award (for Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese Refugee Experience, Temple University Press (2000), National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for College Teachers (1992-1993), and National Endowment for the Humanities grant for field research among Vietnamese in Orange County, California (Summer 1990).
She also regularly gave papers and holds lectures at universities around the USA, Europe and Asia. Adeleida Reyes gave key-note addresses at Columbia University on the occasion of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Ethnomusicology, Mid-Atlantic Chapter (March, 2008) and at the XIVth International Congress of the Gesellschaft fur Musikforschung, University of Leipzig (September 28, 2008).
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Research Fellow
Amos Darkwa Asare is a pedagogue, performer and a researcher who obtained his PhD (Cotutelle) in Ethnomusicology and Cultural Policy from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana and the University of Hildesheim in Germany. His research interests are on music and indigenous rituals, and policy implications for such healing systems. Amos is highly knowledgeable in Ghanaian musical traditions including traditional music and dance and contemporary musical styles. He is a practicing choral musician and has been working with several Ghanaian choirs. Amos has one choral album to his credit. He is currently working on minority fishing groups in Ghana and how they use music to tell their stories.
Amos Darkwa Asare received an AMMR seed money grant from MMRC to develop the research project "‘We sing to live': The analysis of the songs of a minority fishing community in Cape Coast, Ghana".
Job Titles:
- Principal Investigator
- Anja Brunner ( Principal Investigator )
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus of Musicology
Job Titles:
- Project Assistant & Administration
Job Titles:
- Constanza Lecaros ( Musician - Researcher )
Job Titles:
- Cornelia Gruber ( Principal Investigator )
- Principal Investigator of "Reverse Ethnomusicology
Job Titles:
- Gabriela Dossow Ponce ( Musician - Researcher )
Job Titles:
- Fellow at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney
- Research Fellow at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Georgia Curran is a research fellow at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. She completed her PhD studies in Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia (2010) and BA (Hons) in Anthropology at the University of Queensland, Australia (2002). Georgia was previously an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) fellow (2020 - 2023) for a project titled ‘Rethinking the dynamics of place in Warlpiri Performance' and is currently a University of Sydney Robinson fellow (2024 - 2026) on the project ‘Holding on to Warlpiri Songs: Supporting intergenerational transmission of Indigenous cultural heritage'. She is also a chief investigator on two current Australian Research Council projects titled ‘Reconnecting Warlpiri communities to cultural heritage materials' (Linkage Project, 2024 - 2027) and ‘The role of song in Warlpiri and Kaytetye biocultural knowledge' (Discovery Project 2022 - 2025). Georgia is the Chair of the ICTMD Study Group on Music and Dance of Oceania.
Georgia's research interests focus on Indigenous music and language, performance ethnography, cultural continuity and change and the maintenance and revitalisation of endangered musical traditions. Since 2005, she has undertaken close fieldwork with Indigenous communities in Central Australia, particularly Warlpiri communities in the Tanami Desert region. She collaborates with Warlpiri people and community organisations to produce resources to support intergenerational transmission of song knowledge and practice vital to Warlpiri cultural heritage. With Warlpiri women she has published two song books: Jardiwanpa yawulyu - Warlpiri women's songs from Yuendumu (2014) and Yurntumu-wardinkgi jujungaliya-kurlangu yawulyu - Warlpiri women's songs from Yuendumu (2014 & 2017, both with Batchelor Press). She is the author of Sustaining Indigenous Songs (2020, Berghahn) and the co-editor of Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs (with Linda Barwick, Valerie Napaljarri Martin, Simon Japangardi Fisher & Nicolas Peterson, 2024 Sydney University Press). Georgia also co-hosts a podcast Music!Dance!Culture! featuring vulnerable musical traditions and including interviews with scholars, practitioners and other people from these musical communities.
Job Titles:
- Guest Researcher, October 2024 - March 2025 )
Job Titles:
- Principal Investigator of "Challenging the Theater of Memory
Isabel Frey is a Yiddish singer and PhD candidate in the Structured Doctoral Program "Music Matters" at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. She has a background in medical anthropology and sociology, a field that she has also published peer-reviewed articles in. Her current research deals with the politics of Yiddish folksong, the practices of oral transmission and the current developments in creating new Yiddish songs. Her project combines her passion for Yiddish music with the anthropology of the voice and the body and ethnomusicological minority research. It is located between the disciplines of ethnomusicology, cultural studies and gender studies, but also draws on theories from Jewish, Yiddish and diaspora studies. In her PhD project, she also combines her artistic work with her research, conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Yiddish music workshops and master classes that she also received artistic scholarships for. The artistic research pilot project "Challenging the Theater of Memory. Yiddish Song beyond Kitsch and Stereotype" is a further step in this direction to link research with artistic practice.
As a performer, Isabel Frey specializes in Yiddish revolutionary songs and continuing the tradition of Jewish social justice activism both on stages and at political protests. She regularly performs Yiddish music either as a soloist, in the duo Soveles or with the Isabel Frey Trio. She has performed at various international festivals and venues, such as the KlezMORE Festival Bratislava, the Singera Festival in Warsaw or the Willy Brandt Center in Jerusalem. In September 2020 she released her debut album "Millenial Bundist" with Yiddish revolutionary and resistance songs. For the time period of 2023/2024 she has been selected for the New Sound of Austrian Music (NASOM) support program by the Austrian foreign ministry. She has also been interviewed and featured by national and international media such as radio Ö1, ORF2, Deutschlandfunk, Ha'aretz or InGeveb. Additionally, she is the founder and general secretary of the Yiddish cultural association "Friling."
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow from 2021 to 2023, Research Project "Klingender Gemeindebau" )
Job Titles:
- Project Assistant and Administration from 2019 to 2023 )
Olga ZAITSEVA-HERZ (Guest Researcher from June 2022 until February 2023, research project "Transcultural singing between continents: a multimodal reflection of hybridity in the marginalized immigrant vernacular song repertoire", funded by OeAD)
Jelena GLIGORIJEVIĆ (Guest Researcher from May 2021 until April 2022, research project "Who's the Other Here? Popular Music and the Play of Power and Identity in Vienna's Ex-Yugoslav Community", funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation)
Job Titles:
- Lis Vovka ( Research Assistant )
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History at the University of Chicago
- Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, University of Chicago
Job Titles:
- Guest Researcher from August until October 2021, Research Project "Music Practices and Contesting Vlach Identity in Diaspora in Vienna", Funded by OeAD )
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director
- Research Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Maria Bunea ( Musician - Researcher )
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the ICTM Study Group
- Senior Researcher at Mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Marko Kölbl holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology, works as a senior researcher at the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw) and has since been heading it since October 1, 2022.
After studies in classical piano education, he wrote his Ph. D. thesis on Burgenland-Croatian and Croatian laments (2017), for which he was granted the Award of Excellence by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science.
Marko Kölbl is specialized in music and dance of minorities and migrant communities with an interest in intersectional, queer-feminist and postcolonial perspectives. He regularly conducts fieldwork with the Croatian minority in Burgenland/Austria, and has done field research in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Research on Afghan refugee communities in Vienna, as well as in Teheran and Mashad/Iran.
His teaching covers theoretical approaches and musical practice.
Marko Kölbl is chair of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Gender, vice chair of the equal treatment working group (mdw) and member of the leading team of isaScience (mdw). Since 2015, he has been Coordinator of the Refugees Program MORE at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
Job Titles:
- Guest Researcher, March - December 2024 )
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor at the Department of Film
Mayco A. Santaella is Associate Professor at the Department of Film and Performing Arts at Sunway University, which he currenty heads.
Job Titles:
- Co - Editor of Narodna
- Expert
- Member and Chair of Program Committees
- Research Advisor in Tenure Appointment at the Institute of Ethnology
Naila Ceribašić is Research Advisor in tenure appointment at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, to which she has been affiliated since 1990.
She finished her Bachelor's degree in musicology and Master's degree in ethnomusicology at the Department of Musicology (1990, 1993); doctoral degree in the humanities, the field of ethnology and cultural anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb (1998).
Her academic positions in the humanities, particularly the field of ethnology and anthropology include: assistant (1995), senior assistant (1998), research associate (1999), senior research associate (2004), research advisor (2008), research advisor in tenure appointment (2013) and her academic positions in the humanities, particularly the field of science on arts include: titular assistant professor (2001), titular associate professor (2008), research advisor (2014), titular full professor (2015).
Her scholarly research encompasses (in chronological order): traditional music in eastern Croatia, ethnomusicological analysis, folklore festivals and festivalization, music in the context of war and political changes on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, gender aspects of music-making, musical expressions of ethnic minorities in Croatia, theories and methods in ethnomusicology, intangible cultural heritage in Southeastern Europe and worldwide.
She has participated in around sixty international conferences and symposia of professional organizations, and around fifteen domestic ones, including approx. ten keynote speeches and plenary sessions.
Naila Ceribašić has also served as a member and chair of program committees (ICTM world conference in St. John's 2011, symposia of ICTM study groups in Toronto 2000, Prague 2008, Zefat 2012, Petnica 2014) and organization committees (symposia of ICTM study groups in Punat 1995, Korčula 2000; SIEF congress in Zagreb 2015; Istarski etnomuzikološki susreti in Roč 2000-2001, 2003).
She is a member of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM), the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology, the Croatian Ethnological Society, the Croatian Musicological Society, and the Croatian Composers Society, and served as Croatian liaison officer of the ICTM (1998-2007), chair of the Croatian National Committee of the ICTM (2007-2010), member of the ICTM Executive Board (2011-), and representative of the ICTM at UNESCO (2012-).
Naila Ceribašić is a co-editor of Narodna umjetnost: Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research (1999-2011), member of the editorial boards of Ethnomusicology (2009-2010) and Translingual Discourse in Ethnomusicology (2014-), member of the advisory board of Ethnomusicology Forum (2013-2016), The International Journal of Traditional Arts (2016-) and Muzika (2018-).
Her teaching responsibilities include courses in graduate studies at the Department of Musicology, Music Academy, University of Zagreb: "Ethnomusicology", "Ethnomusicological research", "Traditional music", "Traditional music in contemporary times", and "Croatian traditional music" (1999-). Participation in courses in doctoral studies (2001-2007, 2018-
2019), and invited lectures in courses offered by other professors. She also holds courses in doctoral studies at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb: "Festivalization of traditional music", and "Music and social identity" (2008-).
Naila Ceribašić has supervised at least fifteen BA and MA theses and one PhD thesis at the University of Zagreb, four PhD theses in progress at the Universities in Zagreb and Graz and one MA thesis at the University of Sarajevo. She has also held invited lectures at universities in Aveiro, Dubrovnik, Edmonton, Graz, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Padova, Venice, Vienna and Zagreb.
As an expert, she is the representative of the ICTM in the Evaluation Body (and former Consultative Body) of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO (2013-2015); facilitator of capacity-building workshops organized by the Intangible Heritage Section of UNESCO (2016-), and member of the Steering Committee of the ICH NGO Forum (2018-). She is also a member of expert committees for cultural-artistic amateurism and for intangible cultural heritage at the Ministry of Culture; a member of the committee for the traditional culture of the Roma at the Government Office for Human Rights and Rights of National Minorities; a member of the committee for the cultural programs of national minorities at the Council for National Minorities; a member of the steering committee of the National Folk Dance Ensemble of Croatia "Lado"; member of the program team of the International Folklore Festival, Zagreb (1992-2016), and expert collaborator of the event "Cultural Activities of National Minorities in the Republic of Croatia" (2001-2008).
Naila Ceribašić is an expert collaborator in the preparation of several TV programmes.
She was awarded the Milovan Gavazzi Award from the Croatian Ethnological Society in 2003 for the book Hrvatsko, seljačko, starinsko i domaće: Povijest i etnografija javne prakse narodne glazbe u Hrvatskoj (Croatian, peasant, old and local: History and ethnography of the public practice of folk music in Croatia) and the Josip Andreis Award from the Croatian Composers Society in 2000 for Hrvatska tradicijska glazba - Croatian Traditional Music (as editor of the double CD, together with Joško Ćaleta, and the author of accompanying book).
Job Titles:
- Guest Researcher from June 2022 until February 2023, Research Project "Transcultural Singing Between Continents
Job Titles:
- Oluchukwu Akusinanwa ( Musician - Researcher )
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- Petzi Beneš ( Research Assistant )
Job Titles:
- Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, University of Chicago
Philip V. Bohlman is Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History at the University of Chicago, where he is also a member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Besides that, he is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, the Center for Eastern European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, the Affiliated Faculty, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. Besides that he is the Artistic Director at "The New Budapest Orpheum Society", Ensemble-in-Residence, University of Chicago, Honorarprofessor in Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
He completed his studies of B.M. in Piano (1975) at University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.M. in Ethnomusicology/Musicology (1980), and Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology/Musicology (1984) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with the dissertation: "The Musical Culture of Central European Jewish Immigrants to Israel".
His additional teaching and research positions include, among others, Centre Marc Bloch, Französisch-deutsche Universität, Berlin Sommerschule, Universität der Künste, Berlin, Summer 2012, Research Fellow, Phonogramm-Archiv, Ethnologisches Museum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (June-October 2012), and visiting professor at the University of Zagreb (summer semester 2018).
He served as co-editor (with Federico Celestini) in Acta Musicologica (2010-15, 2015-20), General Editor in "Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music", A-R Editions, Co-General Editor in "Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology", The University of Chicago Press, Advisory Editor in "World Music Series" ABC-CLIO Books (2000-2006) and Co-Series Editor (with Martin Stokes), "Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities", Rowman and Littlefield.
Besides that, Philip Bohlman serves as associate editor in Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press and in the Editorial Board, H-Music: H-Net Network Music in History.
His academic and professional honors include the 2017 Koizumi Fumio Prize from the Koizumi Fumio Memorial Foundation, Japan, awarded "for his contribution to ethnomusicology with special reference to diverse research methods and perspectives on world music"; 2017 Ruth A. Solie Award of the American Musicological Society, awarded "each year to a collection of musicological essays of exceptional merit published during the previous year in any language and in any country and edited by a scholar or scholars" (for Jazz Worlds/ World Jazz, coedited with Goffredo Plastino); as well as the 2015 Bruno Nettl Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology for the Outstanding Contribution to the History of Ehnomusicology (for The Cambridge History of World Music) and the 2013 Jaap Kunst Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology for the Outstanding Article in Ethnomusicology (for "Analysing Aporia," in Twentieth-Century Music).
Philip Bohlman has given invited lectures and keynote addresses, such as "The Voice of the People, a Song, a Notable Phrase, a Rhyme, Managed to Survive": The Birth of Musical Aesthetics and the End of Global History, XXIst Century Challenges to the History of XVIIIth Century Musical Aesthetics in Turin, June 12, 2018; "Lifted Up from the Earth at the Very Moment of Death": Music beyond Itself, address at the Japanese Musicological Society in Kobe, May 26, 2018; Lieux d'histoire and the Historical Record" Captured Sounds: Collecting, Storing, Sharing, Humboldt Forum Berlin, May 16, 2018; "Gesang liebt Menge - Musikalische Einheiten in der Einheit der Nation", University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, May 24, 2017.
Job Titles:
- Professor, School of Music, Federal University of Rio De Janeiro ( UFRJ ) Senior Researcher, National Council for Scientific and Technological Developmente ( CNPq ), Brazil
Prof. Araujo's research and publications in book form, academic periodicals or edited volumes released in different countries have mainly dealt with music-making and sound praxis as a significant component in sociopolitical processes pervaded by diverse forms of inequality, conflict and violence. Co-founder of the Study Groups of Applied Ethnomusicology (2007) and of Music and Dance in Latin America and the Caribbean (2017) of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM), the participatory and dialogical research methodologies he has developed in long-term collaboration with organizations and residents of Rio de Janeiro's favelas have attracted both national and international interest.
This accumulated experience has led to an intensive and continuous academic exchange between the research unit Prof. Araujo coordinates - the Ethnomusicology Laboratory - and other research centers and public policy management units in Brazil and abroad, such as the Ethnomusicology Institute (Portugal), the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, the Slovenian Academy for the Arts and Sciences, and the National Museum of Ethnology (Japan), as well as guest lecturing and visiting professorships at institutions such as the University of Helsinki, the University of Chicago, the University of Puerto Rico, the University of Hawaii, the Queen's University of Belfast, the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the University of Ljubljana, the University of Zagreb, the University of Belgrade, the University of Vienna, and the University of Music and the Performing Arts, Vienna.
Prof. Araujo is a cofounder and former President of the Brazilian Association of Ethnomusicology (ABET, and has served in the ICTM Executive Board, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM, USA) Council, as well as in editorial boards of journals such as Ethnomusicology (SEM), Latin American Music Review (university of Texas at Austin), Música & Cultura (ABET), Revista de Musicologia (Argentinian Society for Musicology), and the Malayan Journal od Music.
Job Titles:
- Sofia Labropoulou ( Musician - Researcher )
Job Titles:
- Professor and Chair in Ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Arts
Svanibor Pettan is Professor and chair in ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, President of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) and Chair of its Study Group on Music and Minorities.
Svanibor Pettan was a visiting professor at many renowned universities in Europe and USA, and he has given almost 100 invited lectures at universities or research institutes on other continents as well.
Terada Yoshitaka was an outstanding scholar and a dear friend to many of us. His involvement in minority studies was longstanding both in research and on an institutional level. He served on the board of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Minorities and organised an unforgettable Study Group Symposium in 2014 in Osaka. In 2019, he had joined the Advisory Board of MMRC.
He taught at the Research Center for Academic Resources of the National Museum of Ethnology (NME) in Osaka. Terada Yoshitaka completed his studies in economics in Kobe University (1974-1976), AA in Ethnic Studies, Shoreline College (Seattle, USA, 1977), as well as B.A. in General Studies (1979), M.A. (1983) and Ph.D. (1992) in Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA).
Terada Yoshitaka had held various academic positions at the NME, such as Professor and Director of the Department of Advanced Studies in Anthropology (2012-16), Professor in the Department of Cultural Research (2008-2012, 2016-2017), Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Research (1998-2008) and Assistant Professor, Second Research Department (1996-1998)
He received awards for Best Longer Film in the 3rd International Folk Music Film Festival (Nepal) in 2013 and the Jaap Kunst Award (Society for Ethnomusicology) in 2000.
Job Titles:
- Guest Researcher, June 2024 - December 2025 )
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow from 2023 to 2024, Research Project "Reverse Ethnomusicology
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- Guest Researcher, October - November 2023 )