Following a long wait due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 8th isaScience Conference went forward in its first hybrid edition—both on location in Reichenau an der Rax and online—from 11 to 15 August.

isa21 – the 2021 International Summer Academy of the mdw took place from 14 to 29 August with “unlimited” as its theme. And indeed, the promise that such a theme would suggest was in large part realised thanks to a hybrid format and a comprehensive prevention concept.

The mdw’s Department of Early Music can now look back on an entire year’s worth of activity since its establishment in the autumn of 2020, but it was only just recently that its official opening celebration was able to take place. The broad musical programming of its inaugural concert was selected to reflect the Department’s main emphases.

On 20 September 2021, the mdw conferred an honorary doctoral degree on Evelyn Torton Beck, a pioneer in the fields of women’s and gender studies. With this act of recognition, the University honoured the outstanding dedication of this Vienna-born scholar, whose years of research have shed light on a rich spectrum of science- and scholarship-critical as well as socially critical themes in close association with the arts.

Singer Hiroshi Amako, who wowed both the jury and the audience with his performance in the final round of the International Helmut Deutsch Lied Competition, is elated at his first place and € 10,000 cash prize.

The final round of the competition “mdw Great Talent Award powered by Christian Zeller” was held on 20 May 2021 following a delay due to COVID-19.

These days, whoever stresses the importance of writing in the university context—as did Otto Kruse, one of the pioneers of the discipline of composition studies—is kicking at an open door. For the discipline of writing has long since become a fixture in everyday student life—even at arts universities.

From 7 to 9 April 2021, the mdw hosted the 12th annual conference of the Society of Artistic Research (SAR) as a live and online event in cooperation with the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.