It is one of the aims of Association RIdIM to promote scholarship at all levels, both inside and outside academia. That can only be done by supporting young scholars, and in particular those who are pursuing pre-doctoral research.
2018 Maria Fernandes
At the 18th International Conference of Association RIdIM, Maria Fernandes caught the attention of the Council with her paper entitled Politics and Musical Caricature: The African Colonial Issue in “A Paródia.” We are pleased to announce that Maria Fernandes is the first recipient of the first Award for the Encouragement of Young Scholars. Maria Fernandes is currently a Master’s student in Musicology, in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University (NOVA/FCSH). Her dissertation focuses on musical caricatures, drawn by Rafael and Manuel Gustavo Bordalo Pinheiro, and their political, social and cultural discourses. She is a collaborator and researcher at the Centre for the Study of Sociology and Aesthetics of Music (CESEM), integrating the Musical Iconography Group (NIM), where she studies musical iconography. Since 2017, she has been Vice President of Da Capo Portuguese Musical Magazine and, since 2016, she has held a B.A. in Musicology, and a Liturgical Music Course in Organ.
2019 Rachel Coombes
Rachel Coombes’s paper “Maurice Denis’s L’Histoire de la Musique: Allegorizing cultural tradition in early 20th-Century France” presented at the 19th International Conference of Association RIdIM received the Award for the Encouragement of Young Scholars of Association RIdIM because of its quality, originality and its innovative interdisciplinary approach. Rachel Coombes is a second year doctoral candidate in History of Art at the University of Oxford, where she is undertaking research on the decorative work of the painter Maurice Denis (1870-1943), a life-long music lover and close friend of French composers. She has an undergraduate degree in Music from the University of Oxford, and an MA in History of Art from the University of Birmingham, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Before resuming her academic studies in 2018 she pursued work in journalism and public relations at the Barbican Centre in London.
2023 Lea Luka Sikau
Lea Luka Sikau delivered at the 22nd International Conference of Association Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musical (RIdIM) that was held in Seoul (South Korea), from 19 to 21 October 2023, a highly inspiring paper that examined the process of developing Michael van der Aa’s posthuman opera Upload (2021) from the perspective of a rehearsal ethnography. The paper’s originality and innovative approach as well as the remarkable presentation performance convinced the jury of the Award for the Encouragement of Young Scholars of Association RIdIM. Lea Luka Sikau is an Artist-Researcher, conducting her PhD on new opera, critical posthumanism and rehearsal ethnography at the University of Cambridge. Currently, she holds a lectureship at Humboldt University Berlin, teaching on contemporary music theater and emerging technologies in artistic processes. Sikau has been a Bavarian American Academy Fellow at Harvard University’s Mellon School for Performance and Theater Research and was awarded with the Bavarian Cultural Award for her research at MIT’s Center for Art, Science and Technology. Amongst others, her research has been published in Tempo, The Opera Quarterly and Sound Stage Screen. Within and beyond music theater, she has worked with some of the most sought-after visionaries in the arts such as Romeo Castellucci, Marina Abramović and Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll). As a mezzosoprano, stage director and media artist, Sikau was commissioned by Ars Electronica Festival, transmediale Berlin, Ensemble Modern and Climate Week NYC.
2023 Christopher Ellis Reyes Montes
More details will follow shortly.