Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann

Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann is a leading academic in musicology and empirical aesthetics. She serves as the founding director of the Music Department at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main since 2013. Her career includes professorships at Humboldt University Berlin (2011–2013) and Musikhochschule Lübeck (2010–2011), preceded by academic roles at the University of Zürich (2003–2010).

• Education: MA in Musicology and Classics (Greek) from Freie Universität Berlin (2002); PhD (2005) and Habilitation (2009) from the University of Zürich.

Her research spans the aesthetics of music from historical and empirical perspectives, music sociology and anthropology, Renaissance to early 19th-century music practices, the history of musicology, and music and meaning. She has contributed to interdisciplinary studies linking music with cultural and social contexts.

Wald-Fuhrmann has received prestigious honors, including the Marsilius Medal (2015), the Max Weber Prize (2009), and the Hermann Abert Prize (2009). She is a member of multiple academic institutions, such as the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz.