University of Gothenburg
  2. About
  3. Find staff
  4. Åsa Bergman

Åsa Bergman

Senior Lecturer

Aesthetics Unit
Telephone
+46 31-786 52 18
+46 766-18 52 18
Mail
asa.bergman@gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

About Åsa Bergman

Åsa Bergman, Associate professor in Musicology, Senior Lecturer in Musicology

Research

As a researcher, I approach music as a social, societal, and cultural phenomenon, with particular attention to how ideas and understandings of music are shaped, expressed, and negotiated within contemporary practices. A central strand of my research examines how such understandings give rise to norms and boundary-making processes that influence which forms of participation come to be perceived as possible or, conversely, unthinkable in specific contexts. This includes, for example, analyses of how ideas about music, feminism, and gender equality are articulated within equality work in cultural organisations, as well as investigations into how conceptions of children, music, and voluntary music education are both challenged and reproduced within music-pedagogical settings.

In the recently completed research project Classical Music for a Mediatized World, funded by the Swedish Research Council, I analysed how Western art music is represented and legitimised in marketing materials produced by leading concert halls in Sweden and the United Kingdom. The project’s findings demonstrate, among other things, that discourses of artistic autonomy are not replaced but reconfigured through their integration with notions of music’s instrumental and utilitarian value, particularly in relation to the needs, desires, and self-understandings of contemporary audiences.

Teaching

Since completing my PhD in 2009, I have taught, supervised, and served as course convenor for a wide range of courses in both musicology and cultural studies. In addition, I have been actively involved in the development and revision of courses. My teaching has encompassed undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels..