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6 years of the Research Competition Mozarteum: Since 2019, the Mozarteum University's research management has awarded an annual prize for artistic, scientific and scholarly research projects. Director Eugen Banauch takes stock.
Research Department
The Research Competition Mozarteum aims to promote a community of researchers - students, employees, alumni, some with and some without research experience - and encourage them to optimise their research proposals together with the feedback of an international jury. The prizes are endowed with up to 3,000 euros and the next submission phase starts on 19 March 2025.
Six years of the Mozarteum Research Competition: how would you sum it up?
Eugen Banauch: It's been fun! It was exciting and instructive to observe the directions in which research is being conducted at the Mozarteum. The Mozarteum Research Competition has made it possible to bring this range of research perspectives to light and give them a stage. I see this as one of the RCM's main strengths. I started in 2019 to better serve research at the Mozarteum, and the RCM was born out of this motivation: It was intended to collect and visualise existing research activities that, for various reasons, had not previously been noticed. We also wanted to provide targeted support to help turn long-cherished, but often only half-formulated, research ideas into realisable projects that are worth implementing.
What is the thematic focus of the competition and what makes it special?
The Winner does not take it all - at least not at the RCM. For us, taking part really is everything: the sporting ambition and the prize money are great. But all participants receive feedback on their research idea and can make the decisive steps on the way to a competitive application to the city, state, national fund or European funding programmes. The special thing about the programme is its genuine inclusivity, i.e. everyone from Bachelor's students to full professors can take part - and does take part. Being involved activates, challenges and promotes the likelihood of an idea becoming a real project.
The jury consists of Dame Janet Ritterman, one of the founding members of the Austrian Science Council, and Prof Michael Worton, top advisor for higher education at the British Council: what expertise do they bring to the RCM?
We really do have a USP here, which we are continuing to deepen: to my knowledge, no other music and arts university in Austria currently has such a quality-assured and quality-enhancing in-house application process. With Janet Ritterman and Michael Worton, we have a renowned jury at the top European level. The two of them have immense experience in artistic research, which is so important for us; not least as founding members and former chairs of the PEEK programme for artistic research (Programme for the Development and Exploitation of the Arts), which half of Europe envies Austria for - and rightly so! - envied by half of Europe. Due to my previous work for the PEEK programme of the FWF (Austrian Science Fund), I have known both of them for a long time, and I am very grateful that they have put their knowledge, their immensely broad expertise and their great humanity at the service of the Mozarteum University for more than six years. And then there are also ‘Critical Friends’, a group of peers employed by the Mozarteum University, who see the applications before the jury. Each peer reads an application that matches their own expertise and career path and gives their feedback either verbally or in writing. Based on this feedback, the application can be revised and refined before the jury sees it.
Every year, the Research Competition Mozarteum brings us surprises: original research topics (for instance, 2 proposals on bio-art this year); innovative examples of interdisciplinary working; new perspectives on music pedagogy; inventive approaches to performance of music, drama, and dance, and many more.
— Dame Janet Ritterman & Michael Worton, Jury of RCM
How has the RCM developed over the years?
Last year, we had over 20 submissions from various academic and artistic disciplines at the centre, as well as collaborative submissions. With the student track ‘With Dylan on the Road’, we have an additional model that relies on collaboration and co-creation - the RCM is also seeing more interdisciplinary collaboration across departments. At the end of 2024, we had the RCM evaluated as a programme by our Quality Management department. We are currently in the evaluation phase, but have been able to gain some very encouraging results: The support for applicants and the preparations for Critical Friends are rated as very good, as is the expert and constructive feedback from the jury; almost 80% of respondents will use the RCM again for a new research idea. Visibility needs to be increased, but we are working on it! Because the RCM is a labour of love and a sign that real systemic progress can be achieved incrementally - as much as I, as a child of the 80s, would like to see a turbo booster à la K.I.T.T. for research and the acquisition of scientific third-party funding at the company! And of course, we are proud that the first funded PEEK project and the first funded individual FWF project at our institution were successfully developed from RCM applications: ‘Nexus of Textile and Sound’ by Gertrud Fischbacher and Marius Schebella in 2022 and ‘Aesthetic Judgement in Community’ by Iris Laner in 2024.
How do you define the importance of research at an art university, especially at the Mozarteum University?
As a coherently growing part of the art university structure. One that is now showing a broad-based, proper growth spurt. And the RCM is definitely a springboard: in addition to those mentioned, I can point to the work of the still young composer Erik Aren Schröder, for example, who received a sponsorship award from the RCM in 2023 and will be prominently represented in the Austrian pavilion at the EXPO in Japan this year. The greatest impact of the RCM is definitely the connection and networking that takes place between the participants and thus helps to make research at the centre more visible. The great willingness to be available to our own colleagues as a Critical Friend is also really pleasing. I know how difficult it is for the FWF to find reviewers and how many people have to be contacted in order to win a review. Our quota is actually fantastic, which makes me very happy and also grateful for the positive development of the research climate at our organisation.
What visions and strategic goals is the research management team pursuing for the future direction of the RCM?
I would like to see more funding, even more applications and the opportunity to realise small but meaningful pilot projects as a proof of concept for larger-scale externally funded projects. If an RCM application were to result in the first ERC (European Research Council) for the Mozarteum, it would be like an accolade for the programme. I am currently in the process of writing a research strategy with colleagues at the Mozarteum, in which the RCM could also play a key role; and: the jury should be enriched with personnel expertise in the field of performance. This will possibly also further expand the circle from which submissions are made.
Which target groups would you like to explicitly encourage to take part in the RCM that may not have considered it before?
We are very pleased that the RCM is not only used as a programme by certain specialist departments, but that applications come from many departments. However, we would also like to see more applications from one direction or another. And: interdisciplinary applications. More of this spirit in the RCM would be nice and also - with a view to the Austrian and European research landscape and the global challenges - very timely.
(First published in the Uni-Nachrichten / Salzburger Nachrichten on 15 March 2025)
