Prof. Dr. Matthias Lewy

Prof. Dr Matthias Lewy (born in Magdeburg in 1973) studied Comparative Musicology and Cultural and Social Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin and also completed a diploma in Cultural and Media Management at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin.

After early roles in cultural and music management, including at Piranha Musik and the world music network WOMEX, he turned to academia. From 2005, he conducted extensive field research in Venezuela and northern Brazil, which formed the basis of his PhD and his subsequent work on the sound ontologies of the Amazon.

From 2015 to 2019, he was Professor of Music Ethnology at the University of Brasília. He then moved to Switzerland, where he worked until 2024 as a Professor of Research and Teaching at the Competence Centre for Music Education Research at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. In 2024, he completed his habilitation at the FRANZ LISZT University of Music Weimar and was granted the venia legendi in musicology.

His research encompasses sound ontologies of the Amazon, popular music of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as issues of collaborative archiving and curatorial museum practice, currently within the SNSF project “Resozialisierung von Klang / Resocializing of Sound”. He is a member of the German Music Council in the “Cultural Diversity” section.