About Us

Pauwke Berkers is Head of Department and Full Professor of Popular Music at the department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research interests focus mainly on inequalities in popular music but his academic curiosity often lures him away into topics like awkwardness, well-being, resilience. Anything that is fashionable, basically.

Julian Schaap is assistant professor sociology of music. His research focuses on two pillars: first, he studies social inequalities on the basis of class, gender and race-ethnicity in (cultural) consumption and production practices, with a focus on (popular) music. Second, he works on the myriad intersections between cognitive studies and cultural sociology, particularly Bourdieusian analyses.

Kristina Kolbe is an Assistant Professor in Sociology of Arts and Culture at Department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests lie in the field of classical music, music and multiculture, and in the social effects of on-going diversity and inclusion discourses in the cultural industries, as well as in the relationship between a politics of cultural production and a politics of care.

Wessel Coppes is head of Jazz, Pop and World Music at Codarts Rotterdam (University of the Arts) and part of the management team of Codarts. He is currently writing his dissertation about popular music departments at higher music education institutes.

Femke Vandenberg is a cultural sociologist at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Her research focuses on music consumption, the live music experience for various cultural audiences, and its capacity to bond and divide people. She is particularly interested in the effect of digitalization on these processes.

Frank Kimenai is an independent consultant specialized in the creative industry in general and popular music in particular and an external PhD candidate at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He is currently conducting research on the resilience of music ecosystems, where he combines his formal education as an ecologist with 20 years of experience in the music sector.

Thomas Calkins is a postdoctoral researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Arts and Culture Studies department. His research interests include the sociology of culture, urban sociology, and social stratification. He uses quantitative, qualitative, GIS, and mixed methods to explore the linkages between music and inequality.

Britt Swartjes is a PhD Candidate at the department of Arts and Culture studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research engages with sociological approaches to music in the city, focusing on how music festivals can be public spaces where people from diverse backgrounds meet.

Michaël Berghman is assistant professor of sociology of art and culture at the Department of Art and Culture Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses on cultural taste and perception in the domains of visual art, product design and popular music and how these are patterned along social lines.

Didier Goossens is a staff member at CEMPER (Centre for Music and Performing Arts Heritage) and an external PhD candidate at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. His research focuses on the articulation and validation of local identities in the popular music industry, focusing on metal music in the Global South.

Timo Koren is a lecturer at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Combining sociology, geography, and cultural studies, his research focuses on the night-time economy, in particular cultural production, social inequalities, music genres, and regulation.

Kim Dankoor is an independent media and hiphop researcher, and an external PhD candidate at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at Utrecht University. Her research explores how American and Dutch adolescents and emerging adults perceive ideals of gender-appropriate behavior, physical appearance, and mate desirability in commercial rap.

Martijn Mulder is a PhD candidate at the Media and Communication department. As part of the POPLIVE project, his research focuses on live music venues, music festivals and live music audiences. Martijn is also a senior lecturer at the Leisure and Events department of Willem de Kooning Academy and author of the book Leisure!

Virgo Sillamaa is an external PhD candidate at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam with his research focus on how and which ideas and discourse shape music policy making. With 20+ years of experience in the music sector, he is currently serving as the research coordinator at European Music Exporters Exchange and in Creative Europe projects “Europe in Synch” and “Better live”.

Christopher Thompson is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Swedish Research Council. He specializes in popular music and the processes of memory and commemoration. His current project is on archivalization and music heritage in the American South through the lens of the Southern Folklife Collection.

Ash Layo Masing is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, Department of Sociology, studying the relationship between popular music consumption and the construction of queer identities in the postcolony, specifically Malaysia. He mainly works at the intersection of queer and postcolonial theory and am currently attempting to marry my expertise in said areas with approaches from popular culture studies, ethnomusicology, and the sociology of art.

Petrică Mogoș is an independent researcher and lecturer at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. His research navigates the intersection between neoliberal politics and Eastern European visual culture, (post-)socialist art worlds and independent publishing practices, conditions of marginality and contemporary pop culture. Among other things, he's also editing KAJET journal and running Dispozitiv Publishing and Books.

Niels van Poecke is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Medical Oncology at Amsterdam University Medical Center, where he develops the research line Culture, Contingency & Oncology. His has expertise in the fields of the sociology of culture and philosophy of arts, and in a range of qualitative research methods, including interviewing and arts-based / participatory research methods.

Koen van Eijck is a full professor of cultural lifestyles at the department of Arts and Culture Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research interests include (changes in) cultural taste patterns and audience research, while recently the focus is on innovative classical music practices.