Emma Cäcilia Schrott, BA MSt
Pre-Doctoral Researcher – ERC project GOING VIRAL. Music and Emotions during Pandemics (1679-1919)
Room KR EG 10
Kreuzherrengasse 1, A-1040 Vienna
+ 43 1 71155 3562
Bio
Emma Schrott is a PhD candidate at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna as part of the ERC-funded interdisciplinary research project “GOING VIRAL. Music and Emotions during Pandemics (1679–1919)”. She has studied musicology and ethnomusicology at the University of Vienna, Université Paris-Sorbonne and the University of Oxford, where she graduated with distinction in 2023 as a St Hugh’s College scholarship recipient. Her research has focused on the multifaceted roles that music plays in the emotional and embodied responses of people during times of crises, from exploring sonic affects on TikTok aimed at political mobilization during COVID-19, to investigating socio-cultural dynamics of communal electronic dance music practices within a resistance movement in wartime Ukraine. Additionally, Emma has worked in research at the New York-based Leo Baeck Institute, conducting oral history interviews and navigating historical narratives surrounding Austrian-Jewish emigration to North America. As a PhD student at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna under the supervision of Professor Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild, her doctoral thesis provisionally titled “Emotional Echoes: Music and Emotions During the Spanish Flu Pandemic in Vienna (1918–1919)“ delves into sound and music related dimensions of emotional practices and the transformation of musicking throughout the trajectory of the Spanish Influenza in Vienna.
Research Interests
- auditory culture and history (20th and 21st century)
- history of emotions, senses and experience
- sound studies and affect studies
- technologies of music and sound
Publications
* Emma C. Schrott, “Political Performances: TikTok’s Sonic Influence on Affective Activist Expression”, TikTok-Music-Cultures: Perspectives on the Study of Musicking Practices On and Through TikTok, special issue of Musicologica Austriaca: Journal for Austrian Music Studies, 2024, pp. 54-78.
* forthcoming: Emma C. Schrott, “Raving, Rebuilding and Resisting: Exploring Rave Tolokas as Communal Electronic Music Practices in Wartime Ukraine”, Sounds in Times of War. Popular Music (Contentious) Politics and Social Change since Russia’s War on Ukraine, special issue of Baltic Worlds: Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), 2025.
* peer-reviewed and open access
Conferences
Rebuilding to a beat: Ukrainian clean-up raves as a site of war resistance” in the panel “NIGHT(S)-Science: New Contributions on Nightlife“, Vienna After Dark Conference, 14–16 November 2024.
“Dance and Defiance: Ukrainian Rave Tolokas as Symbols of Democratic Resilience”, Annual Conference of the Austrian Society for Musicology (ÖGMw) “Democracy – Materialization in and through Music”, Mozarteum University Salzburg, 17–19 October 2024.
“Klang und Krise: Musik, Emotion und Erinnerung während der Spanischen Grippe in Wien“, Jour fixe of the working group “History of Medicine and Medical/Health Humanities”, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 27 September 2024.
“Musik und Emotion zur Zeit der Spanischen Grippe – Perspektiven aus Baku und Wien” (together with Aria Torkanbouri) in the panel “Klangräume im Dialog der Wissenschaftskulturen: Case studies zwischen Historischer Musikwissenschaft und Musikethnologie“, German Musicological Society (GfM) Annual Conference “COLLABORATIONS. Against Methodological Compulsion”, University of Cologne and Cologne University of Music and Dance, 11–14 September 2024.
“Speculative Satire” in the panel “Contagious Caricatures: Sonic Stories of Three Epidemics”, Association Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) 23rd International Conference “Laughing your staff off: irony, satire, and parody in visual representations and narratives of music”, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, 29–31 August 2024.
“Historical Perspectives to Music and Medicine: Exploring Music-Emotional Practices during the Spanish Flu Pandemic in Baku and Vienna”, MusiConnect conference, University of Sheffield, 13 June 2024.
“Clean-up Raves – Gemeinschaftliche Musikpraktiken im ukrainischen Kriegskontext“,
international symposium “Musicology in Times of Trouble: Musik und Wissenschaft in Zeiten von Krankheit, Krieg und Krisen”, University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, 31 March– 2 April, 2023.
“Performing Politics on TikTok: Activism without Activists”, international symposium “TikTok–Music–Cultures: Perspectives on the Study of Musicking Practices On & Through TikTok”, University of Vienna, 26–29 May, 2022.
