Dr Florian Scheding
BA(Hamburg), MMus(Lond.), PhD(Lond.)
Expertise
Florian is an award-winning musicologist and cultural historian. His main interest is in musical migrations in all its forms, with a focus on the displacements that characterise the 20th Century.
Current positions
Senior Lecturer in Music
Department of Music
Contact
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Biography
Florian earned his PhD at Royal Holloway University of London (UK), having previously studied at the Universities of Hamburg (Germany) and Salamanca (Spain). In 2007 he was a post-doctoral fellow at Humboldt University Berlin. Before joining Bristol, he was Lecturer and Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. He has served on the AHRC Peer Review College and as Editor of the RMA Research Chronicle. His research has been funded by the British Academy, Arts and Humanities Rearch Council, and German Academic Exchange Programme, among others.
Research interests
Florian's research focuses on music and migration, especially the displacement of European musics and musicians during the 20th century. He has published on migratory musics in all its forms, ranging across functional, popular, and art musics.
His first book, Music and Displacement: Diasporas, Mobilities and Dislocations in Europe and Beyond, co-edited with Erik Levi, was named Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine. It explores the significance of displacement for musical landscapes and music history.
His second book, Musical Journeys: Performing Migration in 20th-century Music received the inaugural Royal Musical Association/Cambridge University Press Monograph Prize 2020. Zooming in on specific migratory moments, it tackles themes such as institutionalization, nationalism, displacement, modernism, and Jewishness, and uncovers the potential of migratory musics to inform dominant historiographical narratives.
Florian is currently working on a project funded by a British Academy Fellowship. Entitled Staging Migrant Voices: Cabaret and Transnational Networks in 20th-Century Britain it researches refugee cabaret in Britain during WWII.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Staging Migrant Voices: Cabaret and Transnational Networks in 20th-Century Britain
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of MusicDates
01/09/2024 to 31/08/2025
Thesis supervisions
Towards a musicology of bass culture
Supervisors
Publications
Selected publications
18/10/2019Musical Journeys
Musical Journeys
Music and Displacement
Music and Displacement
Recent publications
17/02/2025Sounds Across Borders and the Ukraine War
Rethinking Migration
Transformative Representations - Section Introduction
Rethinking Migration
“A State of Crass Ideological Confusion”
Music and Exile
Matthias Pasdzierny und Dörte Schmidt, Hrsg., 'Haben Sie inzwischen etwas Neues komponiert?' Kompositionen zwischen Exil und Rückkehr von Leo Bütow, Richard Engelbrecht, Wolf Rosenberg und Brigitte Schiffer
Die Musikforschung
Migratory Musics
Arts
Teaching
Florian's award-winning teaching cuts across a broad range of 20th- and 21st-century musics and includes courses on music and migration, the Holocaust, cabaret, aesthetics, and gender studies, among others.
In 2016, he received the University of Bristol Teaching Award for Inspiring and Innovative Teaching, and in 2013, the Southampton University Student Union Excellence in Teaching Award. He is Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Florian regularly teaches outside the Music Department, in academic contexts and beyond. He founded the MSc in Migration and Mobility Studies, an interdisciplinary and cross-Faculty programme offering students a unique combination of perspectives from law, sociology, economics, politics as well as modern languages, humanities and the arts.
Florian's current doctoral students work on migratory musics in Chile, the music of Julia Perry, Jewish music in 20th-century China, and music-making practices in the Anglican context. He welcomes applications for PhD study in his areas of expertise.
