Ulrike Praeger

Ulrike Präger's research lies at the intersections of ethnomusicology, musicology, and migration studies, focusing on how and why sonic phenomena, such as musical practices, repertoires, and sonic objects, act as nuanced tools for investigating interrelations between mobility, place, sociality, and political expression. She is currently working on a monograph titled Sounding 21st-Century Post-Migration. For this project, she engages with the "voices" of persons who fled from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan to Europe (mainly Germany), engaging with notions of pluri-culturalism and "post-migration." In her previous position as a senior scientist at the University of Salzburg, she authored and co-published a compendium titled The Routledge Handbook of Music and Migration. Theories and Methodologies (2023, German edition in 2024 titled Musik und Migration: Ein Theorie- und Methodenhandbuch). Her research was recently also supported by a fellowship from the University of Konstanz, Germany. She presents nationally and internationally on topics of music and mobility/migration, as well as on questions of ethnographic intent. Her further research interests include performance and sound studies, critical ethnography, performance ethnography, cultural memory studies, intersections of music, mind, spirituality, and wellbeing, Arabic music, and vocal pedagogy in 17th- and 18th-century Italy and Germany.  

In her research and teaching, Ulrike focuses on the intersections of musicology and ethnomusicology while drawing from various research approaches and theoretical lenses. Ulrike is also an online instructor at Boston University. Before her position at the University of Louisville, she was on faculty at the University of Chicago, the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, the University of Illinois Chicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.   

Ulrike also performed as a soprano with ensembles in Europe and the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Musicology/Ethnomusicology from Boston University and degrees in Voice/Voice Pedagogy from the University Mozarteum Salzburg and Music and Dance Pedagogy from the Mozarteum's Carl Orff Institute. Ulrike lives in a musical household with her 7-year-old son Raphael, who loves to conduct his colored and cut-out paper instruments, and her husband David, a musicologist and baroque trumpet player.