Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir (she/her) is an Icelandic composer and artistic researcher based in Vienna. Her work centers on voice, embodiment, and extended vocal techniques, weaving ecomusicology and experimental writing into interdisciplinary practice. A doctoral candidate at the Artistic Research Center at mdw, she received the phonoECHOES prize for Sound Art, Improvisation and Experimental Music at Klangzeit Festival 2023. She contributes to the European project CYANOTYPES at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and was co-artistic director of Skálholt Summer Concerts (2022). A member of the art collective HLÖKK, whose debut album Hulduhljóð won the Kraumur Award, her work has been presented internationally—from hidden sound installations in forests to theatrical vocal compositions—at festivals including Lucerne Festival Forward, Dark Music Days, and Young Nordic Music.

Isabel Frey is a Senior Artist and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw) and a Yiddish singer. Her research focuses on Jewish music, diaspora, minority studies, gender & queer studies, religious studies, sound studies and urban ethnomusicology. She completed her PhD in the Structured Doctoral Program at mdw 2020–2024 on contemporary transmission and performance of Yiddish folksong, and was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies in 2023. She co-led the arts-based pilot research project “Challenging the Theater of Memory: Yiddish Song beyond Kitsch and Stereotype” (2022–2024) with Benjy Fox-Rosen at the Music and Minorities Research Center of mdw. She currently leads the FWF-funded project “(Un)heard Neighbors: An urban ethnomusicology of proximity“, (TAI1016625, 2025–2027). Outside academia, she is a sought-after performer and teacher of Yiddish song, tours internationally and has released three albums of Yiddish song. 

Nastasia Heckendorff is a musicologist and postdoctoral researcher in the FWF project “Composing | Publishing | Performing Opera: The Making of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck and Lulu” at the Alban Berg Foundation in Vienna. She previously held a research and teaching position at the Institute of Musicology Weimar-Jena, where she received her PhD in 2024 with a dissertation on the intersections of politics and music theater in 17th-century Italy (“Inszenierte Politik und politische Inszenierung – die Bühnenwerken Marco Marazzoli im Kontext des seicento” forthcoming with Bärenreiter). Further academic appointments include fellowships and visiting positions at Yale University, the German Historical Institute in Rome, and Humboldt University of Berlin. Her teaching and research focus on performance studies, authorship, and material cultures, with particular attention to the cultural history of music in the early modern period and modernity.

Further information: https://nastasiaheckendorff.com

Judith McGregor studied Instrumental Pedagogy (Viola) at the mdw and completed the Master’s program Music Mediation at the ABPU Linz. Since 2022 she has been University Assistant in the Department of Instrumental and Vocal Pedagogy at the mdw. During her studies she began teaching at music schools in Lower Austria and developed numerous music mediation projects with schools, artists, and partner institutions. As a freelance violist she collaborates with ensembles such as Neue Oper Wien and the Symphony Orchestra of the Volksoper Vienna. From 2016 to 2022 she worked at Music & Arts Schools Management Lower Austria. Her doctoral research focused on music mediation in the context of instrumental pedagogy, and she contributes to professional committees and networks on national and university level.

Emma Schrott studied musicology and ethnomusicology at the University of Vienna, Université Paris-Sorbonne, and the University of Oxford, graduating with distinction as a St Hugh’s College scholar. Her research explores sonic engagements with emotional and embodied experiences during times of crises, from TikTok soundscapes mobilizing political action during COVID-19 to communal electronic dance music practices as resistance in wartime Ukraine. She has also worked at the New York-based Leo Baeck Institute, conducting oral history interviews on Austrian-Jewish emigration to North America. Her PhD at the mdw, part of the ERC-funded project “GOING VIRAL. Music and Emotions during Pandemics (1679-1919)”, investigates the cultural history and history of experience of the Spanish Flu in Vienna.

Jagoda Szmytka is a contemporary music composer, artist and artistic researcher in the field of contemporary music Since 2021 she is pursuing her artistic research doctoral degree at the Artistic Research Center of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna — currently finalising her dissertation »Almanac of Extended Composition«. Her artistic research focuses on musical notation, the organisation of musical material, compositional tools and methods in instrumental composition and in connection with drawing.

The composer’s creative output encompasses over forty compositions written for solo instruments, chamber and large ensembles, some of which are extended through audio and video projection. Moreover, she wrote one chamber opera and three experimental music theatres. The aesthetics of her music is rooted in exploration of the of instruments and characterised by expressive gestures. Szmytka collaborated with numerous international ensembles, such as ensemble recherche, ensemble modern, ensemble phace, kronos quartet. Her music was commissioned by renowned institutions and festivals, such as the Great Theatre National Opera in Warsaw, Warsaw Autumn, Wien Modern or Lucerne Festival. Jagoda Szmytka’s compositions are published by PWM Edition. Additionally to composing, Jagoda Szmytka practices drawing on paper.

Link to composer’s profile at the PWM Edition website

Irene Stepniczka studied musicology and cognitive science (focuses: psychology, neuroscience, and AI) at the University of Vienna. Since 2018, she has been working in various contexts and projects at the WZMF – Music Therapy Research Centre Vienna (Wiener Zentrum für Musiktherapie-Forschung), which is part of the Institute for Music Therapy at the mdw. She has developed a questionnaire to support reflection regarding intra- and interpersonal relationship experiences in dyadic music therapy improvisations (together with Monika Smetana), co-led the participatory project »My Tune. Music Therapy from Our Perspectives« (together with Julia Fent), and is performing research into music therapy in a neuroscientific setting (together with Thomas Stegemann). Her current focus is on her dissertation »Music therapy – a sociodynamic system – interactions, effects, and influencing factors«, which will bring together interdisciplinary perspectives on music therapy.

Karla Louisa Stolle has been a doctoral student at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna since October 2024. Her dissertation compares music education across Europe by analyzing curricula from five countries. Her research interests include international music education, curriculum studies, language-sensitive teaching, and practice-oriented instruction. Previously, she studied Music and German Education at the University of Potsdam, completed her state examination in 2022 with distinction, and was a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation. Alongside her doctoral studies, she works as a university assistant at the mdw and coordinates, together with Prof. Dr. Isolde Malmberg, the Erasmus+ project TEAM. 

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Mentors

Alexandra Kertz-Welzel has been Professor and Head of Music Education at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich since 2011, and served as Dean from 2023 to 2025. From 2021 to 2025, she also worked as a Professor II at the University of Inland Norway in Hamar (Norway), and from 2002 to 2005, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle (USA). Her books Globalizing Music Education (Indiana University Press) and Rethinking Music Education and Social Change (Oxford University Press) were published in 2018 and 2021. From 2017 to 2019, she was Chair of the International Society for the Philosophy of Music Education. Since 2025, she has been the editor of the international journal Philosophy of Music Education Review.

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Alexandra Kertz-Welzel is the mentor of Emma Schrott, Irene Stepniczka and Karla Louisa Stolle

Isabel Mundry's work is characterised by a unique sonic language that investigates the relationships between time, space, and perception in rich, multi-faceted ways. In doing so, she creates new pathways and different realities in her compositions, which are explored through the timbre, harmony, and rhythms of her nuanced music.

Among the world premieres of recent years are works of various genres with diverse sources of inspiration, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble intercontemporain and the Ensemble Resonanz, among others.

Isabel Mundry honed her composition skills under Frank Michael Beyer, Gösta Neuwirth and Hans Zender, among others. This training was complemented by studies in musicology, art history, and philosophy, as well as a course in computer science and composition at the Paris IRCAM. Isabel Mundry is a member of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin and Munich as well as the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. Since 1998, she has been a frequent lecturer at the Darmstadt Summer Courses. After holding a professorship at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts from 1996, she has been a professor of composition at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2004 and, since 2011, a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich.

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Isabel Mundry is the mentor of Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir and Jagoda Szmytka

Susanne Rode-Breymann, Professor of Music-Specific Gender Studies at the Nuremberg University of Music since October 2024 as part of the Bavarian High-Tech Agenda's Distinguished Professorship Programme, was a research assistant at the Universities of Bayreuth and Bonn, taught in Hanover after her habilitation in 1996, then from 1999 to 2004 as a full professor of historical musicology at the Cologne University of Music. In 2004, she moved to the University of Music in Hanover in the same role and founded the Music and Gender Research Centre there in 2006, which she headed until September 2024. During this time, she was co-founder and spokesperson for the State Working Group of Gender Research Institutions in Lower Saxony, an expert in the BMBF's Female Professors Programme (2013-2024) and participated in the Lower Saxony Ministry's ‘Dialogue Initiative for Gender-Equitable University Culture’ from 2014 to 2018.

She publishes on early music, music theatre (including Musiktheater eines Kaiserpaars. Wien 1677 bis 1705) and gender studies (including Alma Mahler Werfel. Muse. Gattin. Witwe), edits various yearbooks and series, and was the specialist editor for music in the Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit.

In recent years, she has focused on university management and policy (2010-2024 President of the HMTM Hanover; 2017-2023 Chair of the Rectors' Conference of German Music Academies; 2021-2023 HRK Vice-President for Cooperation and Diversity within the Higher Education System).

Susanne Rode-Breymann is the mentor of Isabel Frey, Nastasia Heckendorff and Judith McGregor.