My research combines theoretical and methodological tools from musicology, gender and media studies and examines how music, meaning and subjectivities are negotiated in contemporary digital music and media cultures.

In my postdoc project (Swedish Research Council, 2021-2024), I have investigated mediations of music and subjectivities in algorithmic music cultures. I have analyzed how Spotify mediates music and gender through automated and human processes in practices like playlist curation and the organization of genres (Muchitsch 2023, Muchitsch and Werner 2023).

I have also recently written about young women's negotiations of emotion and gender through musical participation on TikTok (Muchitsch 2024).

In my doctoral research (Uppsala University, 2020), I developed the concept of vocal figurations to analyze how voices in contemporary popular music culture signal gender. An article that develops this research (Muchitsch 2023a) has been awarded the IASPM Norden Early Career Scholar Award 2024.

In 2024, I teach and supervise students at the division of Gender Studies, Södertörn University.

In 2023, I co-hosted the conference Mediations of Music and Power in Online Music Cultures at Södertörn University, September 21-22, 2023. https://www.sh.se/5.54f62dab18529c5062d5f84c.html External link, opens in new window.

Publications

Muchitsch, V. (2024). Sad Girls on TikTok: Musical and Multimodal Participatory Practices as Affective Negotiations of Ordinary Feelings and Knowledges in Online Music Cultures. Popular Music and Society, 47(2).

Muchitsch, V., & Werner, A. (2024). The Mediation of Genre, Identity, and Difference in Contemporary (Popular) Music Streaming. Twentieth- Century Music, 20(3).

Muchitsch, V. (2023a). Listening to Anohni’s variously vibrating voice: Studying transfeminine vocality in 21st-century popular music culture through the concept of vocal figurations. Popular Music, 42(2), 59-78. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143023000107.

Muchitsch, V. (2023b). “Genrefluid” Spotify Playlists and Mediations of Genre and Identity in Music Streaming. IASPM Journal 13(3).

Delle, A., Fabian, A., Gálvez, J., Gilli, L., Just, S., Klauke, C., & Muchitsch, V. (2023). Klangliche Materialität(en) von Musik - Versuch einer So(u)ndieurung in den Popular Music Studies. Ein Forum. In R. von Appen & P. Klose (Eds.), “All the Things You Are”. Die materielle Kultur populärer Musik (Vol. 47, pp. 12-32). transcript.

Muchitsch, V. (2020a). Vocal figurations: Technique, technology, and mediation in the gendering of voice in twenty-first-century pop music [Doctoral Thesis, Uppsala University].

Muchitsch, V. (2020b). Religion and Popular Music. Häger, A., ed., 2018. Religion and popular music: artists, fans, and cultures. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 246 pp. ISBN 978-13-5000-147-3. [Review]. Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning, 102, 141-143.

Muchitsch, V. (2016). Neoliberal Sounds? The Politics of Beyoncé's Voice on “Run The World (Girls)”. PopScriptum(12), 1-14. https://www2.hu-berlin.de/fpm/popscrip/themen/pst12/pst12_muchitsch.html

Popular and creative writing

Muchitsch, V. (2023a). Dreaming, Remembering, Building. Reflections on Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck’s ‘Dreaming About Tomorrow’ at Nidi Gallery, Tokyo, October 2022. In Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck: Dreaming About Tomorrow (pp. 36-41). London: Poetic Pastel Press.

Muchitsch, V. (2022). The Ghosts of Academia. In J. Hansen & I. Nilsson (Eds.), Critical Storytelling: Experiences of Power Abuse in Aca- demia. Leiden: Brill.

Muchitsch, V. (2018). Introduction. In J. Tagada, Daily Practice. London: InOtherWords.