Dr. Felix Morgenstern
Lecturer and Research Assistant (Postdoc) in Ethnomusicology
CV
Most recently, he held a postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF-Project M3292G) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, where he conducted an ethnographic and historical study of translocal folk music practices and nationalism in Austria (2021–2024). From 2018 to 2020, he was also an Irish Research Council (IRC) Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar at the University of Limerick, writing his dissertation about the role and place of German Irish traditional music practitioners in modern European history and the present. A professional traditional musician with several years of international touring, recording and teaching experience, Morgenstern's scholarly work explores global Irish (folk) musics, specifically focusing on the interstices of music and nationalism, intersectional masculinities, memory/nostalgia, as well as the musical manifestation of class and capital in various forms. He previously taught ethnomusicology, popular music and Irish music at Limerick and the University of Vienna and has served as an external assessor for BIMM University’s Popular Music courses in Dublin (2021–2023).
Research Interests
Intercultural transactions
Memory studies
Nationalism and cosmopolitanism
Music and gender (masculinities)
Music and social class
Global popular musics
Applied ethnomusicology
Publications
(2023) ‘Celtic Alterity: A Persistent German Imaginary of Irish Folk Music.’ In Experience and Expectation: The “Future From the Past” in Music Making, ed. Ardian Ahmedaja and Anda Beitāne, 73-88. Riga: Musica Baltica.
(2023a) ‘Evading National Identity: On Translocal Irish Folk Music in Austria.’ Yearbook for Traditional Music, 55(1):51–68. https://doi.org/10.1017/ytm.2023.3.
(2022) ‘Uilleann Pipemaker Andreas Rogge: Ein Dudelsackbauer als Fallstudie zur Ergründung deutsch-irischer musikalischer Affinitäten.’ In Global – digital – medial: Musik in transkulturellen/traditionellen Räumen und Kontexten, ed. Edda Brandes, Ralf Martin Jäger and Dorit Klebe, 169–84. Hildesheim: Olms.
(2022a) ‘Irish Rebel Songs in the GDR: Popular Culture and Anti- Imperialist Resistance.’ Popular Music History, 14(2): 122–32. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.21644.
(2021) ‘Of Sentimentalists, Rebels, and the Musically Attuned: Nineteenth-Century German Travel Writing on Ireland.’ New Hibernia Review, 25/3: 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1353/nhr.2021.0033.
(2021a) ‘Sideways Nostalgia, Adopted Republicanism and the Performance of Irish Rebel Songs in the GDR.’ Ethnomusicology Forum, 30/3: 340–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2021.1967770.
(2020) ‘From Ethnic to Sonic Irishness: The Reception of Irish Traditional Music in Germany.’ Ethnomusicology Ireland, 6: 61–79. https://www.ictm.ie/from-ethnic-to-sonic- irishness-the-reception-of-irish-traditional-music-in- germany-felix-morgenstern/.
(2019) ‘Die Rolle irischer Folkmusik im Rahmen des DDR- Folkrevivals (1976-1990): Von der klanglich-reflexiven zur inhaltlich-restaurativen Nostalgie eines Ersatz-Genres.’ In Perceptions and Perspectives: Exploring Connections between Ireland and the GDR, ed. Gisela Holfter, Deirdre Byrnes and Jean Conacher, 37–56. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
(2018) ‘Voices of Ambiguity – The GDR Folk Music Revival Movement (1976-1990): Exploring Lived Musical Experience and Post-War German Folk Music Discourses.’ Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies, 56/2: 116–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/04308778.2018.1501956.
