Richard Parncutt
Professor for Systematic Musicology - University of GrazUniversity of Graz
In 2014, I decided never again to fly to an academic conference unless invited. Since then I have flown twice to conferences in response to invitations, but in both cases I could have avoided flying, once by taking a long train trip and in the other by organising a live stream. There is no looking back now: while flying seems increasingly wrong, the number of interesting conferences in Europe that can be reached within 24 hours on a train just keeps going up. I use that time writing my presentation, reading literature, and so on. Never a dull moment. The conference I am organizing on four continents in July 2018 (ICMPC15/ESCOM10) will half the carbon footprint per participant and future conferences could reduce it by 90%.
I am a music psychologist, or more generally a systematic musicologist, at the University of Graz, Austria. I’m interested in the cognitive processes underlying our understanding and enjoyment of music – an empirical psychological approach to music theory. I also do research about music performance, the origins of music, and collaboration between humanities and sciences.