Felix Morgenstern is an FWF-funded postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Born in Berlin, he holds a PhD and an MA in Ethnomusicology (2021; 2018), as well as a BA in Irish Music and Dance (2016), from the University of Limerick’s Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. A former Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar (2018–2020), his work explores translocated Irish traditional music(s) in Europe, with particular attention to the interstices between folk-music practices and nationalism, class, masculinities, race and nostalgia. Felix’ doctoral dissertation locates the role of German Irish traditional-music practitioners in the broader context of modern European cultural history. Key findings from this work appear in journals such as Ethnomusicology Forum, Ethnomusicology Ireland and New Hibernia Review, as well as in multiple edited volumes. Further extending this study of communities of practice beyond ethnic-national and diasporic frameworks of identity construction and negotiation, his current FWF-sponsored (Lise-Meitner fellowship) postdoctoral research project at KUG shifts the focus to an ethnography of the Austrian Irish folk-scene and its associated audience.

An active practitioner of Irish traditional music on the bodhrán and uilleann pipes, Felix has toured extensively with Irish dance-show productions such as Rhythm of the Dance (The National Dance Company of Ireland), performing in concert venues across Europe, Russia and China. He has delivered workshops and masterclasses at the Spanish Peaks International Celtic Music Festival in Colorado, USA, as part of Limerick University’s Blas International Summer School of Irish Traditional Music and Dance, and at the Traditional Music Academy in Milan, Italy. Felix is also a former member of the successful Irish traditional quintet The Conifers, who won the 2018 Michigan Irish Music Initiative competition and toured the USA and Europe between 2018 and 2020. As well as releasing a self-titled studio album with The Conifers in 2019, Felix has been in demand as a guest percussionist on other Irish traditional records, such as pianist Deirdre Millane’s ‘Idir Dubh Agus Bán’ (2019).

• Of Sentimentalists, Rebels, and the Musically Attuned: Nineteenth-Century German Travel Writing on Ireland. New Hibernia Review 25/3: 99–110, 2021, DOI: 10.1353/nhr.2021.0033.
• Sideways Nostalgia, Adopted Republicanism, and the Performance of Irish Rebel Songs in the GDR. Ethnomusicology Forum, 2021, DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2021.1967770.
• Class, Masculinities and Sideways Nostalgia: Encounters with Irish Traditional Music in Germany. PhD diss., University of Limerick, 2021.
• From Ethnic to Sonic Irishness: The Reception of Irish Traditional Music in Germany, Ethnomusicology Ireland 6: 61–79, 2020.
• Die Rolle irischer Folkmusik im Rahmen des DDR-Folkrevivals (1976–1990): Von der klanglich-reflexiven zur inhaltlich-restaurativen Nostalgie eines Ersatz-Genres. Perceptions and Perspectives: Exploring Connections between Ireland and the GDR, edited by Gisela Holfter, Deirdre Byrnes and Jean E. Conacher. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 37–56, 2019.
• Voices of Ambiguity–The GDR Folk Music Revival Movement (1976–1990): Exploring Lived Musical Experience and Post-War German Folk Music Discourses. Folk Life 56/2: 116–129, 2018, DOI: 10.1080/04308778.2018.1501956.

Publications in Researchgate

Publications in Academia