Dr Florian Scheding

My research focuses on music and migration, especially the displacement of European musics and musicians caused by the catastrophes that characterise the 20^th century. I have published on migratory musics in all its forms, spanning various genres from functional to popular to art musics. My work has been published in numerous edited collections, journals, encyclopedias, and elsewhere.

My most recent book, Musical Journeys: Performing Migration in 20th-century Music explores concepts of migratory musical culture and aesthetics and links these to wider socio-cultural backgrounds. Zooming in on specific migratory moments, I tackle themes such as institutionalization, nationalism, displacement, modernism, and Jewishness, and uncover the potential of seemingly marginalized migratory musics to inform dominant historiographical narratives. Musical Journeys received the inaugural Royal Musical Association/Cambridge University Press Monograph Prize 2020.

My first book, Music and Displacement: Diasporas, Mobilities and Dislocations in Europe and Beyond, co-edited with Erik Levi and named Outstanding Publication of the Year by Choice Magazine, has been described as 'a significant contribution to the burgeoning literature on the relationship of music to place and displacement.' It explores the significance of displacement for musical landscapes and music history from a wide variety of angles and case studies, incorporating art, popular, folk, and jazz music and interacting with areas such as gender and post-colonial studies, critical theory, migration, and diaspora.