Helene Heuser
Musicology - Research Assistant
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Helene E. Heuser (she/her) studied musicology, comparative literature, and cultural studies at the University of Bonn (B.A.) and the University of Cologne (M.A.). During and after her studies, she worked as a cultural manager and event organizer in the independent music scene in Cologne (ON-Neue Musik Köln) and Berlin (inm/Fieldnotes), as well as in a consulting capacity for Popboard NRW. In 2023, she began her doctoral project on ecological imaginaries in 1990s popular music with a fellowship from the International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, which she has been continuing at the University of Siegen since the winter semester of 2025.
Research interests:
• Politics and popular music
• Environment, Ecology, and Pop Culture
• Aesthetics and history of popular music
• Ethnomusicology
• Digital Youth Cultures
Memberships:
• IASPM D-A-CH – International Association for the Study of Popular Music (Board Member)
• GfPM – Society for Popular Music Research
• EASLCE – European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment
Publications
Heuser, Helene (In preparation) Euro Hot 100 and the Utopia of a Pan-European Music Market. In: Vibes – Metadata and Metanarratives.
Vollmert, Christina; Heuser, Helene (In preparation) Global Self-Hypnosis: Memes & Mental Health. In: Schütze, Grünwald (eds.): Thanks to Images, TikTok, and the Apocalypse. Image Circulation on the Internet. Kopaed Verlag (Art, Media, Education series).
Heuser, Helene (2024) Pop Avatars – A Fragmented History of Popular Music (Review). KULT_online No. 69. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22029/ko.2024.1459
Vollmert, Christina; Heuser, Helene (2024) Internet Aesthetics. Co-creative Practices & Postdigital Worldbuilding. In: Kramer, Riettiens, Schütze, Vollmert (eds.): The Formation of Narrative. Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Intermedial Narrative [in] the Postdigital Era. Munich: Kopaed Verlag (Art, Media, Education series), pp. 287–315.
Heuser, Helene (2023) “Everything Is Red, and Yet I Think of Blue.” In: MusikTexte, Journal of Contemporary Music, No. 176.
Heuser, Helene (2022) Body—Sound—Matter: The Festival for Intangible Art (Review). In: *MusikTexte*, Journal of New Music, No. 175.
Heuser, Helene (2022) “Out of Time.” In: Grapefruits, Issue 6, Rythm, pp. 4–6.
Heuser, Helene (2021) Promoting Diversity in the Independent Music Scene and a Series of Inequalities. In: Kulturpolitische Mitteilung, Issue 172, I/2021, pp. 62–64.
Heuser, Helene (2020) “Instruments on Instruments or How to Train Your Third Leg.” In: Grapefruits, Issue 3, Instruments, 2020, pp. 3–6.
Lectures
2025
“Mother Nature, You’re Just Showing Off Now” – Wildlife Documentary Turned Pop Recording. Presentation, July 11, 2025, IASPM 23rd International Conference, “Recording Popular Music.” Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris, France.
2024
Euro Hot 100: Charts, the Mainstream, and the Utopia of a Pan-European Music Market. Presentation, November 9, 2024, 6th IASPM-D-A-CH: Metadata, Metainformation, Popular Music, and Its Metamorphoses, University of Zurich.
Taking a Stance for the Masses—or the Ambivalent Positionalities of Researching the Mainstream in Popular Music. Presentation, July 3, 2024, “Music, Musicology, and Academic Responsibilities in the 21st Century,” School of Music, University College Dublin.
Ecological, Planetary, Spiritual? – A Thematic Analysis of the European Music Charts from 1984–2003. Presentation, June 22, 2024. 9th IASPM D-A-CH Collegium Musicum Populare, FRANZ LISZT University of Music, Weimar.
Planet Pop. Poster presentation, June 19, 2024, “Arboreal Entanglements: Human, Nonhuman, More-than-Human,” GCSC, JLU Giessen.
Zoom In Zoom Out – Ecospirituality in the European Mainstream of Popular Music. Presentation, April 26, 2024, Dark Green Religion in Europe: History and Impacts, Dangers and Prospects, IEG–Leipniz Institute for European History, Mainz.
2023
Spiral, Loop, Revival – Navigating the Meta Realms of Internet Aesthetics. Talk and Workshop with Christina Vollmert, October 27, 2023, Worklab II: How to Dank Images, Department of Art and Music, University of Cologne.
2022
On Fanzines and Being a Fan – Transdisciplinary Writing About Music. Lecture Talk, Sept. 8, 2022, Format (Event Series), Güterbahnhof Bremen.
Grapefruits. Fanzine about female* composers and sound artists. Lecture, July 7, 2022, Popular Music and Feminism (Lecture Series), University of Siegen.
Grapefruits: Fanzines and Being a Fan. Workshop, June 11, 2022, Her*Story – Feminist Literature Festival Cologne.
2021
Life Is Not a Nightmare—Affirmation Memes on Instagram. December 11, 2021, presentation and workshop in collaboration with Christina Vollmert, “Thanks to Images, TikTok, and the Apocalypse: The Circulation of Images on the Internet,” University of Cologne.
Grapefruits on Punk. Presentation / Audio Paper, November 19, 2021, Fringe of the Fringe—The Privileges of Subculture in the Memory of Institutions of the IMAI Foundation (Inter Media Art Institute) and the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf,
2020
Salsa Subjectivites—On the Construction of a Collective Continental Latin American Identity at Cologne’s Latin Party Radio Sabor (Panel). Presentation and Screening of the Documentary *Dis-placed* in collaboration with Maria Quiros-Fernandez and Ani Petrossian, March 13, 2020, ICTM’s LAT CAR Symposium on Time, Identity, and Memory at the Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas, Mexico.
2019
The Gender Switch—How Lucille Became The Axe. Presentation. March 29, 2019, “Klingende Bildkörper: Performances of Music and Gender in Visual Cultures,” Cologne University of Music and Dance.
Winter Semester 2025: Popular Music and Social Inequality, University of Siegen
Winter Semester 2024: Fantastical Environmental Imaginations – Popular Music in Times of Ecological Crises, Leuphana University
Winter Semester 2024 All Pop(ular) Music is Ecological (Guest Lecture, MA in Intermedia), University of Cologne, University of Karlsruhe
Winter 2024: Planet Pop – Ecocriticism and Popular Music (Guest Lecture, BA in Music Education), University of Cologne
Summer 2024 Adorno’s Theory of Music (co-taught with Dr. Simon Tönies), Justus Liebig University of Giessen
