Honours and Achivements

mdw Doctoral Scholarship 2025

The mdw doctoral scholarship supports outstanding dissertations at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Its aim is to support early stage researchers at doctoral level and to give visibility to the achievements within the framework of the PhD programme at the mdw.

We congratulate this year's scholarship holders Manuel Baumer, Felix Dieterle, Sara Isabel Grajales Tamayo, Titas Lasickas, Aharon Rabenu, Bettina Schuster, Xinzi Hou, Philipp Kehrer and Aria Esmaeili Torkanbouri on their outstanding achievements!

Herta & Kurt Blaukopf Award for Outstanding Dissertations at the mdw

We warmly congratulate the awardees of the Herta and Kurt Blaukopf Award 2026:

• Isabel Frey: „Vocal Yiddishkeit. Postvernacular Transmission and Performance of Yiddish Folksong“ (Structured Doctoral Program)

• Bianca Jasmina Rauch: „Widerständige Blicke: Weibliche Identitätssuche im Coming-of-Age-Film“ (Filmakademie Wien - Institut für Film und Fernsehen)

• Tianyu Jiang: „The Elusive Dancefloor: Music, Club Space and Sociality in Shanghai's Queer and Women-Centered Underground Music Scene“ (Structured Doctoral Program)

• Alexander Flor: „Das Dramma per Musica im Konzeptalbum. Interpretation und Inszenierung Alter Musik am Tonträgermarkt“ (Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Interpretationsforschung)

• Ioannis Christidis: „Music in the Experience of Forced Migration from Syria to the European Borderland. Two Case Studies“ (Music and Minorities Research Center)

Award of Excellence for Isabel Frey

Isabel Frey was honoured by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education for her dissertation "Vocal Yiddishkeit: Postvernacular Transmission and Performance of Yiddish Folksong" with the Award of Excellence 2025. This state prize, endowed with €3,000, has been awarded to the 40 best dissertations of the past academic year since 2008. Our warmest congratulations!