Laura Wahlfors

Introduction

Laura Wahlfors is University Lecturer of Music Performance Research at the Sibelius Academy Doctoral Programme and Research Centre. She also holds the position of Associate Professor of Musicology and Comparative Literature in the University of Helsinki. She is Editor-in-Chief of Trio, a biannual, peer-reviewed journal of music research published by the Sibelius Academy.

Driven by a philosophical and psychoanalytic ethos of questioning, Laura’s work explores the interrelations of performance, subjectivity, affect, and embodiment. With an educational background both in the humanities and in piano performance, she has developed a keen interest in the encounters, tensions and frictions between practice and theory, body and discourse, voice/sound and writing. In her doctoral thesis she applied the ethics of ’intimate revolt’ (Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes) to music performance and listening. Examining the musician as a subject of revolt, she delved critically into the status of music and voice in philosophy.

Laura's more recent research has centred around queer perspectives on music performance (post-doc project “Queering musicianship”). Her current project “Music, performance, and the Sapphic (anti)modernism of Natalie Clifford Barney’s circle” draws on her interests in Fin-de-siècle and Belle Époque Paris, decadence, and affective (queer) history. Laura also has a strong interest in language, written expression, and creative research writing, for which she won Kone Foundation's academic writing award in 2014. As a pianist, she has specialised in collaborating with singers and enjoys playing French 19-century music, Schumann, and Scriabin.

In the Sibelius Academy Doctoral Programme, Laura co-leads the seminar of music performance and teaches philosophical approaches to music performance and artistic research, gender and queer theory, interrelations of music and literature, and academic writing. She advises doctoral researchers in artistic research projects on diverse topics. Laura is particularly keen on working with pianists, singers and composers.

Laura is one of the core conveners of the international Performance Philosophy Network. She is also a long-time member of the International Association for Word and Music Studies .