Professor Arne Spohr Invited to Serve as DAAD Guest Professor at the University of Bremen, Germany

CMA faculty member Arne Spohr, Professor of Musicology, was selected as a DAAD Guest Professor at the University of Bremen, Germany, where he taught two seminars during the university’s fourteen-week Summer Semester 2026. Offered through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the world’s largest funding organization for the international exchange of students and scholars, the highly competitive Visiting Professorship Program strengthens the internationalization of teaching and research by bringing faculty from North America to universities across Germany.

Hosted by historian Professor Rebekka von Mallinckrodt in the University of Bremen's Department of History, Spohr taught seminars on two of his principal research areas: historical sound studies and musicians of African descent in early modern Europe. Von Mallinckrodt, one of the leading scholars of slavery in early modern Germany, has collaborated with Spohr on several research publications. In addition to his teaching, Spohr presented his current research on the intersections of sound, space, and power in early modern princely pleasure gardens in research colloquia at both the University of Bremen and the University of the Arts Bremen. While in Bremen, Spohr also presented his new research on Black musicians at the court of King Frederick William I of Prussia at the interdisciplinary conference Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, one of Europe’s leading centers for research on the early modern period.

“My teaching experience in Bremen has been a thoroughly positive one,” Spohr says. “I have enjoyed the amazing support of colleagues as well as the high-quality, curious, creative, and critical contributions of students, most of whom aren’t musicians but aspiring historians, political scientists, and teachers specializing in English and German literature. I have greatly benefited from discussions about sound and music with colleagues and students outside my own field of musicology. Their critical questions, suggestions, and fresh ideas have broadened my perspective and will shape my future research.”

The guest professorship also created new opportunities for collaboration with scholars and cultural institutions in Bremen. Among these are conversations with the Focke Museum—the State Museum for Art and Cultural History of Bremen and one of northern Germany’s leading museums of regional history and material culture—about future research and public engagement projects that build on Spohr’s interdisciplinary work at the intersection of music, sound, and history.