Melanie Unseld studied musicology, German literature, philosophy, and applied cultural studies in Karlsruhe and Hamburg. She gained her doctorate from the University of Hamburg in 1999. She was a Lise Meitner University Special Programme scholar and then a research assistant at the Hanover University of Music and Drama (Research Centre for Music and Gender). From 2008 to 2016, she held the professorship for Cultural History of Music at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, where, between 2009 and 2015, she was also director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies (ZFG). In 2013, she received her Habilitation from the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. Since 2016, she has been Professor of Historical Musicology at the Department for Musicology and Performing Studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw).