New Visiting Professor for Central European Studies Saskia Jaszoltowski delivers talk about her work
On Tuesday, February 10, 2026, Professor Saskia Jaszoltowski, the new Visiting Professor for Central European Studies at Leiden University joined students, colleagues and friends of Austrian Studies at Leiden for a lunch-time talk that introduced her exciting research to our community.
Jaszoltowski is an interdisciplinary musicologist and throughout her research and teaching she deals with current and historical issues relating to music and media culture. She devotes particular attention to researching film music, which extends to the areas of intermediality and so-called screen-media musicology. At Leiden, she will activate this expertise in her weekly B.A. class “Film Music – History, Society, and Analysis.” That course, as the study guide states, “deals with the history of Hollywood film music from the beginning of the sound era until today. Besides focusing on understanding how music contributes to the narrative of the film and how it interacts with the dramaturgy, one of the main issues will be to critically reflect on the powerful ways that the medium film in general impacts the perception of past and present societies. Film music, even though one might not be aware of it, shapes how we perceive the story and how that story relates to our everyday lives.”
Besides her expertise in film music, Jaszoltowski brings vast knowledge of the link between music and memory culture. In her habilitation thesis, for example, she examined cultures of memory using examples from the 18th century to the present day (Erinnerungsorte in der Musik, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2022).
Her second course this semester at Leiden, “Music and Memory Culture,” focuses on fundamental questions about the relationship between music history and memory culture. Students will examine how music historiography is conducted, how it generates meaning, and how it evaluates different kinds of musical cultures in order to understand why particular composers, performers, musical works, genres and styles are remembered today whilst others are forgotten.” Jaszoltowski’s aim is “to elaborate the underlying mechanisms and processes in the construction of historical narratives that are responsible for a sustainable contribution of meaning to a particular event, agent, and cultural artefact.”
Whether teaching at Leiden, back at her home university in Graz or at other Austria Centers around the world, Jaszoltowski attaches great importance to a historical foundation and the consideration of socio-cultural, political and economic contexts. Furthermore, in her current research, she explores the discourses of posthumanism and discusses contemporary phenomena of musical culture against this background. Over this semester at Leiden, students and colleagues can look forward to learning much from Prof. Jaszoltowski, who comes to Leiden with the support of the Austrian Government Ministry of Women, Science and Research and the OeAD, Austria's Agency for education and internationalisation.
