Prof. Dr. phil. Christine Dettmann

Christine Dettmann holds the equivalent of a Master’s degree (German: Staatsexamen) in Music, Philosophy and Portuguese, obtained at universities in Rostock (Germany). She continued her studies in Lisbon (Portugal) at the Universidade Nova, where she graduated with a Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology, whilst preparing the PhD project about migrant Brazilian musicians in the Portuguese capital. From 2010-13, she participated in an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary project at the University of Essex’s History department, through which she undertook fieldwork trips to rural Southwestern Angola as a post-doctoral researcher (»The Angolan Roots of Capoeira: Transatlantic Links of a Globalised Performing Art«). In 2014, she embarked on a professorship in Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Theatre in Munich (Germany). Since then, she has taught a wide range of music-related topics, engaged in widening the musical horizons of future musicians and music pedagogues who study Western classical music.

For her research and teaching, Christine is interested in studies of sound, migration, sustainability, music and memory, decolonizing the (ethno)musicology classroom, unearthing sonic archives and resolving questions of ethnography in diverse settings and media.

Recently, Christine finished her manuscript titled »A Bow Across the Ocean: Ancestry, Capoeira and Angola« (2023) which gives, amongst others, the first comprehensive overview in repertoires of the Angolan gourd-resonated musical bow mbulumbumba, locating them amidst a patriarchal world view of an agro-pastoral society. Currently, she prepares an ethnography about traditional cultural expressions of Muhumbi agropastoralists, living in the province of Cunene.