Scholars who have completed their doctoral dissertation in the field of music in 2023 and 2024 are eligible to apply for the IMS Outstanding Dissertation Award 2025 (IMSODA2025). Dissertations may be written in any language. The award, which includes a cash prize, is overseen by an international committee led by members of the IMS Directorium. Applicants must be IMS members (click here to join or renew your membership).
Applications are currently closed. The submission deadline for the IMSODA2025 was 23 February 2025, 23:59 CET. The call for the next IMSODA will be published in early 2026.
Winners of the IMS Outstanding Dissertation Award
Award Winner: Marcel Camprubí, “Lines of Thought: Notations and Histories of Music Theory from Abbasid Baghdad (762–1055),” Princeton University (US), 2024. Abstract
Award Winner: Brian Robert Fairley, “Dissected Listening: A Media History of Georgian Polyphony,” New York University (US), 2023. Abstract
1st Honorable Mention: Brian Barone, “Music, Real Abstraction, and Growth in the Black Atlantic,” Boston University (US), 2024. Abstract
2nd Honorable Mention: Julin Lee, “Soundtracks on Demand: Engaging with Music and Sound in Science Fiction Television Series in the Streaming Era,” University of Music and Theatre Munich (DE), 2024. Abstract
3rd Honorable Mention: Akihisa Yamamoto, “On ‘Proletarian Music’ in Early Soviet Russia: A Conceptual History of the Pre- and Post-October Revolution,” Tokyo University of the Arts (JP), 2023. Abstract
4th Honorable Mention: Juan Alberto Bermúdez Molina, “Virtual Musical.ly(ties): Identities, Performances, and Meanings in a Mobile Application; an Ethnomusicological Approach to TikTok’s Musicking,” University of Vienna (AT), 2023. Abstract
Committee: Miriam Escudero (CU), Edwin Li (HK), Nozomi Sato (JP), Britta Sweers (CH, chair)
Application deadline: 23 February 2025
Applications received: 68
Award Winner: Devon Borowski, “Navigating Voices: Song, History, and Humanity in the British Imperial Project, 1770–1836” (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2023). Abstract
Award Winner: Francesco Milella, “Beyond Italian Opera: Manuel García in Postcolonial Mexico City (1826–1828)” (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2022). Abstract
1st Honorable Mention: Giulia Accornero, “Measured Music: Diagrammatics of Musical Time from Baghdad to Paris, 850–1350” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2023). Abstract
2nd Honorable Mention: Alexander Cowan, “Unsound: A Cultural History of Music and Eugenics,” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2023). Abstract
3rd Honorable Mention: Paul Newton-Jackson, “Georg Philipp Telemann and the Invention of ‘The Polish Style’: Musical Polishness in the Early Modern German Imagination” (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2022). Abstract
4th Honorable Mention: Júlia Durand, “Ferramenta, retalho ou papel de parede: a música de catálogo na criação audiovisual online” (Lisbon: Nova FCSH, 2023). Abstract
Committee: Paulo Ferreira de Castro (PT, chair), Evi Nika-Sampson (GR), Britta Sweers (CH), Leonardo Waisman (AR), Fumitaka Yamauchi (TW)
Application deadline: 20 February 2024
Applications received: 57
Award Winner: Peter Asimov, “Comparative Philology, French Music, and the Composition of Indo-Europeanism from Fétis to Messiaen” (Cambridge: Clare College, 2020). Abstract
1st Honorable Mention: Alana Mailes, “Mobility, Diplomacy, and Musical Exchange between England and Venice, 1600–1660” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2021). Abstract
2nd Honorable Mention: Timothy Daly, “From Counterpoint to Composition in the Early L’homme armé Mass” (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2020). Abstract
Committee: Paulo Ferreira de Castro (PT), Ralf Martin Jäger (DE), Evi Nika-Sampson (GR, chair), Jason Stoessel (AU)
Application deadline: 15 February 2023
Applications received: 50
Award Winner: Elizabeth Grace Elmi, “Singing Lyric among Local Aristocratic Networks in the Aragonese-Ruled Kingdom of Naples: Aesthetic and Political Meaning in the Written Records of an Oral Practice” (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2019). Published as an open access publication: Elizabeth Grace Elmi, Singing Lyric in the Kingdom of Naples: Written Records of an Oral Practice (Mainz: Schott Campus, 2023).
1st Honorable Mention: Daniel K. S. Walden, “The Politics of Tuning and Temperament: Transnational Exchange and the Production of Music Theory in 19th-Century Europe, Asia, and North America” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2019). Abstract
2nd Honorable Mention: Arwin Quiñones Tan, “Music, Labor, and Capitalism in Manila’s Transforming Colonial Society in the Late Nineteenth Century” (Manila: University of the Philippines, 2018). Abstract
Committee: Egberto Bermúdez (CO, chair), Andrea Bombi (ES), Jen-yen Chen (TW), John Griffiths (AU), Laura Tunbridge (UK), Christiane Wiesenfeldt (DE)
Application deadline: 31 December 2019
Applications received: 24
The award was generously supported by the Strecker-Stiftung.
Award Winner: Shingkwan Woo, “The Ceremonial Music of Zhu Zaiyu” (New Brunswick: The State University of New Jersey, 2017). Abstract
1st Honorable Mention: Yen Jen Yvonne Liao, “Western Music and Municipality in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai” (London: University of London, 2016). Abstract
2nd Honorable Mention: Valentina Anzani, “Antonio Bernacchi (1685–1756): virtuoso e maestro di canto bolognese” (Bologna: University of Bologna, 2018). Abstract
Committee: Egberto Bermúdez (CO, chair), Andrea Bombi (ES), Jen-yen Chen (TW), John Griffiths (AU), Laura Tunbridge (UK), Christiane Wiesenfeldt (DE)
Application deadline: 20 June 2018
Applications received: 25
The award was generously supported by the Strecker-Stiftung.
Current IMSODA Committee
Chair: Britta Sweers (CH)
Members: Miriam Escudero (CU), Annegret Fauser (US), Edwin Li (HK), Nozomi Sato (JP)