In May 2026, the interdisciplinary festival “TODAS. Latin American Women* Musicians in Vienna. Concerts, Lecture, Dialogues” took place at the mdw. This event was an outcome of the research project “Reverse Ethnomusicology: Migrant Musicians as Researchers”. Co-curator Gabriela Dossow Ponce describes how the festival evolved and why it was so important.

When exactly does a pandemic begin, and when does it end? Is there a clear “before”, “during”, and “after”, or does our understanding of such things have more to do with our perception of temporality? And by what exactly are the knowledge and memories we have of past pandemics shaped? Simply by images, monuments, and statistics? Or perhaps also by sounds and music?

At the mdw, EMp can look back upon over 40 years of history as an artistic and pedagogical discipline. Particularly in recent years, the relevant practice and research have expanded thanks to dialogue with various groups. The associated range of activities extends from courses for seniors and band offerings for adolescents to child-parent courses, instrumental courses focused on violin, guitar, piano, and wind instruments, and the inclusive band project “Young All Stars” as well as cooperative efforts between EMp teachers and schools and music-making courses for professionals—to mention just a few of the practical teaching formats offered by the mdw’s “Viennese EMp” team.

November 2019 witnessed the establishment of the Music and Minorities Research Center (MMRC) at the mdw, made possible by the Wittgenstein Award (EUR 1.4 million) conferred upon Ursula Hemetek for her ethnomusicological minority research in 2018. On 30 April 2026, the Wittgenstein Award-funded phase of the MMRC’s activities ended after 7 years.

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.