Date:
Location:
Presenting: "It's too local." Young Instrumental Musicians from Ghana, and some Paradoxes of Globalisation
Discussant: Nate Plageman (Wake Forest University)
Katharina Gartner is a researcher and lecturer on youth and expressive cultures (especially music), following an interdisciplinary approach. She works as a Visiting Researcher at Harvard University’s AAAS in spring 2022, after a research semester at the University of Ghana. She is an IFK_Junior Fellow Abroad with the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (https://www.ifk.ac.at/fellows-detail-en/katharina-gartner.html). Based in Vienna, Austria, Gartner regularly lectures at the University of Vienna, and at Vienna University of Economics and Business, amongst others. Her Ph.D. dissertation focuses on young instrumental musicians in and around Accra, Ghana, and explores questions on “prolonged youth” and creativity in a setting of rapid urbanization, increased precarity, digital revolution and accelerated global flows. It is based on multi-sited fieldwork between the years 2013 and 2020. Katharina Gartner’s work stems from an interdisciplinary background. She studied in Vienna, Paris, and Accra: African studies, anthropology of music, and psychoanalysis of childhood and youth (specializing in transculturality). In addition to Ghana and Austria, research has led her to four African countries (in West and Southeast Africa). Her academic work is inspired by her practical experience as a counselor for youths and their families, and as a performing musician.