The Wittgenstein Award
The establishment of the MMRC was made possible by Ursula Hemetek receiving the Wittgenstein Award in 2018. The Wittgenstein Award is presented to outstanding researchers by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) once a year. The award to Ursula Hemetek represented a first in several respects: since the introduction of the prize in 1996, it was not only the first time that the award went to a scholar in the field of ethnomusicology, but also the first time that a researcher at an arts university received this great distinction. It is therefore all the more important that the establishment of the MMRC at mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna should also give significant impulses to research at this university.
Project report
Duration: 2019 - 2026
The 2018 Wittgenstein Award helped establish a thriving research center: the Music and Minorities Research Center (MMRC) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. The MMRC explores the role music plays in relationships between dominant and marginalized social groups. Its definition of a minority is based not on numbers but on power relations. Its research spans local, national, and global levels, considering socio-political conditions and historical perspectives. Because the mechanisms of marginalization and the meanings of “minority” differ greatly worldwide, the center’s socio-political engagement, one of its cornerstones, is guided by the circumstances of each context.
Since the center opened in November 2019, the funding has supported numerous research projects. Some illuminate international specifics (“Ethnic and Social Minorities in China”), others address pressing contemporary problems (“Music in the Experience of Forced Migration from Syria to the European Borderland”), and others examine local expressions of music and inequality (“Klingender Gemeindebau,” “Ružake gila – Ruža’s Songs,” “Challenging the Theater of Memory: Yiddish Song beyond Kitsch and Stereotype”). These projects drew on a broad range of methods from the social sciences, humanities, and artistic research.
From the outset, a central goal was to support early-career researchers. To this end, the MMRC built an infrastructure that serves as a research venue and provides seed funding and advice on securing third-party grants. This strategy enabled further externally funded projects that greatly expanded its research field, with projects in Ghana, India, and Namibia, on deaf choirs, and on the ex-Yugoslav music scene in Vienna.
The MMRC’s events foster exchange within the research community and dialogue with the wider public. At the annual MMRC Lecture, scholars from different disciplines engage with artistic contributions, opening new perspectives on a shared theme. It draws great interest both on site and online.
The MMRC’s symposia are also well established. The dialogue-driven symposia “The Power of Music” (2022) and “Between Research and Activism” (2026) brought together local activists and international researchers, creating a space for productive exchange on socially and politically engaged scholarship.
Research findings were disseminated at international conferences and in various publication forums. The online journal Music & Minorities, founded in 2021, is a diamond open-access journal, the first devoted to music and minority studies. Its special collections, appearing at irregular intervals, are closely tied to MMRC projects, pooling international expertise and setting priorities in scholarly debate. The MMRC has also developed notable expertise in digital exhibitions, two already published (“Ružake gila” and “Objects and the Archive”).
Today, the MMRC is a research center with international reach and strong local roots, providing vital scholarly and socio-political impetus. It actively seeks exchange with institutional partners and with committed initiatives and advocacy groups from relevant communities.