I am a professor for anthropology and aesthetics at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies (ifeas) at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany (ifeas) at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. I studied anthropology, philosophy and psychology at the University of Tübingen, then did extended fieldwork on consumption and scarcity in rural Niger. After finishing my PhD at the University of Bayreuth, I turned to study popular music, which, for several reasons, led to a research project on heavy metal in Madagascar. Since then, I try to understand how music does what it does – how it affects us, provides us with a sense of meaning, enriches our lives and “performs” aspects of the wider social and cultural surroundings within which it is played and listened to. The notion of “existential aesthetics” helps me channel this interest to basically understand music as a sonic philosophy of life. Before coming to Mainz, I held a research fellowship at the Department of Ethnomusicology at University of California Los Angeles and teaching positions at the universities of Bayreuth, Freiburg and Cologne.
For further information and a list of my publications, please check my personal webpage at the ifeas.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Markus Verne
Forum universitatis 6
55099 Mainz
Tel.: 06131-3920526
Fax: 06131-3923730
E-Mail
Research Project: