The International Day of Provenance Research has been taking place annually on the second Wednesday in April since 2019. It’s an occasion for various activities ranging from lectures to guided tours of museums, collections, and libraries and on to the publication of scholarly essays in the blog Retour. 8 April of this year saw the mdw participate in this day’s observance for the first time, doing so with a dedicated event and the opening of the permanent exhibition Stolen Melodies – Provenance Research at the ub.mdw in the open stacks of the mdw’ University Library (ub.mdw).

What if questions of social justice could take tangible shape in our own bodies such that we could discuss complex political issues without relying primarily on words? In an era in which disembodied content consumption continues to polarise much of the Western world, my PhD project explores a different mode of collective sense-making: a performative and educational musical theatre practice for adults not necessarily trained in either dance or music.

When people hear the term “music education”, their first association is frequently with a concrete practice: that of music teaching and musical learning in classrooms, at music schools, in workshops, or in work with people of various backgrounds and ages ranging all the way from kids and teens to seniors. Initially less present in their minds is the research accompanying this practice—research that analyses it, critically scrutinises it, and advances its development.

The Vienna-born violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962) was one of the 20th century’s most influential recording artists, and this year marks the 150th anniversary of his birth.

With its international symposium “Between Research and Activism: Futures of Music and Minority Studies”, scheduled to take place from 12 to 14 February 2026, the Music and Minorities Research Center (MMRC) will be ushering in a new phase of its existence. As part of this, the MMRC—founded in 2019 to pursue research on music and minorities—plans to celebrate its initial seven years.

The mdw’s Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology, which is Austria’s largest place of research and teaching in its field, has existed at the mdw for 60 years. It’s hence no wonder that the department’s history is commonly viewed as having begun in 1965. However, folk music as well as research on folk music had been present here long before.