Milestone reached
MUGI platform for musicological gender research receives long-term funding
The freely accessible research and publication platform ‘Music and Gender on the Internet’ (MUGI) has been promised funding by the Mariann Steegmann Foundation for ten years. The website is editorially managed and maintained by the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre in cooperation with the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar (since 2022) under the direction of Prof. Dr. Beatrix Borchard, Prof. Dr. Nina Noeske and Dr. Silke Wenzel. Further cooperation partners are the University of Luxembourg and the Luxembourg-based ‘CID | Fraen an Gender’. The website can be found here: mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de
The funding of €600,000 – evenly distributed between the universities in Hamburg and Weimar – is not only intended to cover the costs of editorial and public relations work and necessary maintenance work, but also to expand the platform to include a substantial factual section with around 100 lemmas. A particular focus is on internationalisation: in the future, French-language articles will also be included and existing German- and English-language articles will be translated.
The establishment of new international editorial offices is also to be further promoted. ‘This funding finally enables us to implement our long-standing plans,’ emphasises Dr. Nina Noeske, professor of musicology at the University of Weimar. Since its foundation in May 2004 by Prof. Dr. Beatrix Borchard, MUGI has established itself as a central digital point of contact for musicological gender research. The platform connects researchers throughout Europe and makes their findings available to a broad public.
‘The MUGI project underscores the central concerns of our faculty: If we want to compensate for structural disadvantages – such as those faced by women in musical and musicological discourse – then we need, above all, information and easily accessible source material. And if we want to realise big projects, cooperation is the key to success: in the field of musicology, a connection has been established between Weimar and Hamburg in which the universities strengthen each other,’ emphasises Dean Prof. Jörn Arnecke from the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar.
The centrepiece of MUGI currently consists of two complementary areas: a comprehensive online lexicon with over 600 biographical articles, catalogues of works, collections of materials, and detailed information on sources, literature, and current research desiderata, flanked by multimedia presentations that bring female musicians and gender-relevant topics to life. Based on Beatrix Borchardt's methodical concept of ‘cloze writing’, a new, gender-sensitive perspective on music history as the history of cultural action is emerging.
[18.02.2025]