Dear all,

we wish you a great, pleasurable, healthy and successful year 2026!

This year, our activities at the Department of Music Sociology will be dedicated to celebrate its 60^th anniversary.

International Conference

THE ARCHIVAL TURN IN MUSIC SOCIOLOGY

5–7 February 2026

mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

& online › PARTICIPATE @ ZOOM

The Department of Music Sociology houses two comprehensive archival collections of the first generation of music sociologists in Austria: the Kurt Blaukopf Archive, which will available online in 2026, and the Elena Ostleitner Archive. These archives are accompanied by the private library of Irmgard Bontinck (1941–2021) that also found its home at the department after her death.

Kurt Blaukopf (1914–1999) initiated the founding of the department in 1965. His work on music sociology, which spans over five decades, was influential for many scholars in the German speaking area concerned with music and society. Elena Ostleitner (1947–2021) worked at the department from 1975 until her retirement in 2010 and became an internationally recognised scholar in the late 1970s for her research on women in music. Irmgard Bontinck had served as the Head of the Department of Music Sociology, following Kurt Blaukopf, and introduced the term ‘Viennese School of Music Sociology’ in 1996 to describe its interdisciplinary and empirically oriented research programme that was gradually developed in the late 1960s and the following decades in Vienna. Significant contributions to this research programme were also made by Herta Blaukopf, the wife of Kurt Blaukopf, and by Dora Schimanko (1932–2020) who worked as secretary at the department for many years with Kurt Blaukopf.

In the course of the 60^th anniversary of the Department of Music Sociology, the international conference THE ARCHIVAL TURN IN MUSIC SOCIOLOGY seeks to acknowledge the contributions of female, feminist, queer and post-/decolonial scholars, musicians, activists, and archivists to the history of music sociology and to critically engage with the historiographies of music’s past.

We cordially invite you to participate in the conference!

Conference Programme & further information

We look forward to seeing you!

Best regards,

Rosa Reitsamer (Head of Department),

Rainer Prokop, and Tianyu Jiang