Rebekah Ahrendt

Dr. Rebekah Ahrendt serves as Associate Professor of Musicology within the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University's Faculty of Humanities. She currently holds leadership positions as Vice Chair of the COST Action EarlyMuse and Director-At-Large of the International Musicological Society. Her academic journey includes previous appointments as Assistant Professor of Music at Yale University and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Tufts University, alongside prestigious visiting fellowships at St John's College, Oxford, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

Dr. Ahrendt's research expertise spans Opera Librettos, Baroque Music and Culture, Early Modern Cultural History, History of International Relations, Music Historiography, Music and (Cold War) Politics and Diplomacy, Paleography, Archives, History of Music Theory, Music and Material Culture, and Music Diplomacy. Her scholarly approach uniquely examines mobility musically by tracing how ideas, people, and practices are transposed across cultural boundaries. This perspective demands engagement with unusual archival sources, exemplified by her groundbreaking discovery of a trunkful of undelivered mail from the turn of the eighteenth century.

Her most notable project, "Signed, Sealed, and Undelivered" (SSU), garnered worldwide media attention and culminated in a team-authored article in Nature Communications (2021), making her the first historical musicologist with a byline in that prestigious journal. Her publications demonstrate consistent engagement with music diplomacy, early modern cultural history, and paleography, increasingly incorporating interdisciplinary approaches that blend musicology with diplomatic history, material culture studies, and digital humanities methodologies.

• Scaliger Fellowship at Leiden University

Dr. Ahrendt has served on numerous PhD examination committees and actively mentors graduate students. Her research has received support through institutional fellowships and collaborative projects, particularly through her leadership in COST Action EarlyMuse, which fosters European research networks in early music studies. She frequently collaborates with international scholars and institutions, reflecting her commitment to transnational approaches in musicological research. Her media engagement extends to consulting and appearing on the BBC television series "Who Do You Think You Are?" where she helped Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber trace his musical and genealogical roots (season 20, episode 1, 2023).

Dr. Ahrendt is deeply involved with the Utrecht Centre for Early Modern Studies (UCEMS) and has organized public events that bridge academic research with broader audiences. Her work on the Brienne Collection represents a significant interdisciplinary collaboration involving historians, conservators, and scientists, demonstrating her commitment to making historical research accessible and relevant to contemporary audiences.