Birgit Abels

Professor Birgit Abels serves as Director of the Department of Musicology at the University of Göttingen's Faculty of Arts and Humanities, where she holds a full professorship in Cultural Musicology since March 2011. She is also Editor-in-Chief of 'the world of music (new series)' and holds dual academy memberships in the Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Her research pioneers Cultural Musicology as a decolonized framework integrating historical, systematic, and ethnomusicological methodologies. Key interests include:

• Neo-phenomenological approaches to performing arts
• Music-making as epistemological practice
• Indigenous knowledge systems in Pacific contexts
• Blurring boundaries between musical traditions

Her publications reveal a trajectory from Micronesian fieldwork to broader theoretical frameworks, with recent work emphasizing alternative epistemologies through her ERC-funded 'Sound Knowledge' project. Current research focuses on atmospheric theory and meaning construction in Pacific musical practices.

Award highlights:

• ICAS Book Prize (2009) for Palauan music research
• ERC Consolidator Grant for Western Pacific epistemology project
• Election to Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences (2023)

As Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator project 'Sound Knowledge,' she leads groundbreaking research on alternative musical epistemologies in the Western Pacific. Her editorial leadership of 'the world of music' advances global musicological discourse while her academy memberships recognize sustained scholarly impact. She actively challenges artificial distinctions between musical genres through holistic methodological approaches.

Her work bridges Pacific ethnography, North Indian musicology, and Southeast Asian performing arts through the unifying lens of Cultural Musicology, establishing new frameworks for understanding music as a mirror space for cultural identity formation.