Job: New Director, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt

Call for Nominations: NEW DIRECTOR, The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA), Frankfurt

Deadline for nominations: December 31, 2023

The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) is seeking a new director for its scientific departments and hereby invites anyone who may be aware of suitable candidates from ethnomusicology to nominate them. Self-nominations are also encouraged.

The MPIEA conducts interdisciplinary research in the fields of music and the performing arts, combining approaches from the humanities (e.g., musicology, philosophy, social sciences) with those from empirical sciences (e.g., psychology, neuroscience, genetics). Currently, it consists of two permanent departments and five research groups, some of which are permanent. It has excellent research facilities including a library (with a unique collection of literature on aesthetics from all relevant research fields), in-house behavioral, physiology, eye-tracking, and EEG labs, an audio studio and, most prominently, the ArtLab – an auditorium allowing for empirical and experimental performer and audience research in an ecologically valid environment. A new facility for brain imaging, the CoBIC, shared by the MPIEA, the Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience, and the Goethe University will open in 2024. The CoBIC will be equipped with scanners for 3T MRI, 7T MRI, as well as MEG.

To complement its research scope, the MPIEA is looking for a new director. The possible areas of expertise of the candidates are broad. On the one hand we are looking for candidates with a strong background in quantitative empirical studies (psychology, neuroscience, and related fields of the cognitive sciences) of performing and temporal arts, their creation, performance, and reception. We are particularly interested in scientists with methodological expertise and topical interests that complement existing research at the Institute, e.g. by focusing on other forms of temporal art than music. On the other hand, we welcome nominations of researchers with a more humanistic background from fields such as ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology, or cultural sociology. Here, a focus on non-Western traditions in the performing arts will be particularly welcome. 

Candidates should have an excellent academic track record and previous experiences with supervising PhD students and leading a research group, as they will head a department of up to 20 researchers, including doctoral candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and senior scientists. They need to have a strong interest in collaborative work across disciplinary boundaries and be capable of developing a research program that will substantially contribute to the field of (empirical) aesthetics of the performing arts.

We would like to point out that a (self-)nomination does not constitute a legally binding application. The search committee in charge of the appointment processes may or may not consider a nominee further.

The MPIEA is a member of the prestigious Max Planck Society, Germany's fully publicly funded organization for basic research. A directorship is equivalent to a tenured full professorship (without teaching obligations) and comes with a generous annual budget for building up and maintaining an entire department with PhD students, postdocs and additional staff.

Nominations should include a letter of motivation, including a link to the university homepage of the nominee, and be sent via e-mail to giulia.addari[at]ae.mpg.de no later than December 31, 2023, and be addressed to:

Prof. Dr. Fredrik Ullén, Managing Director

Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

Grüneburgweg 14

60322 Frankfurt am Main, Germany