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Course date
July 1–8, 2024
Location
Budapest
Application deadline
Application for this course is closed.
ECTS Credits
1.5
Course delivery
In-person
SUN Packages
Fee-Paying
Tuition Waiver
Partial Scholarship
Full Scholarship

After five successful editions, we continue our summer course addressing music as a cultural heritage from theoretical and professional aspects. In 2024, we will focus on storytelling and music as intangible heritage, explore the pathways of community and identity building through storytelling, and look at audiovisual tools and the portrayal of heritage on film from a critical viewpoint. 

Our course takes a highly interdisciplinary angle at modern musicology. Postulating musicology as an integral part of heritage studies, we employ its methods to investigate broader subjects: music acts as a prism through which social processes and identity formation unfold. The erudition of our excellent lecturers, the openness encoded in the course, and the varied professional and cultural backgrounds of participants have contributed to a revelatory summer course of collective exploration, repeating each year. 

Our focus in 2024 is storytelling, its archaic, traditional, and contemporary forms, and its role in community and identity building. Musical storytelling has resonated over thousands of years of human culture, as accessible as few other creative outputs, and of unique binding force. The perspective of heritage provides valuable insight into deciphering audiovisual languages prevalent today as well as questions of identity, belonging, and imagined and actual communities. 

Through the prevalence of audiovisual language in today’s societies, further socio-political implications open up, ones in which CEU’s Media Hub will deliver valuable expertise. With one eye on trending concerns of cultural management, we will touch upon audience building as well as music supervision and the role of technology in heritage preservation. Fieldwork training, a popular element of the summer course will this year tackle film and audiovisual data in fieldwork, take a critical look at ethnographic films and their use in research and heritage preservation, filmmaking as methodology as well as video-walking. 

Student participation is substantial in the makeup of the course; subjects outlined above will be discussed in lectures, followed up in group assignments, and reexamined in joint discussions and masterclasses. Our distinguished lecturers invite students to a mutually enriching exploration of all elements of the course. 

Participants’ own cultural heritage will be presented in the framework of our highly successful project development program: students will be assisted by mentors in preparing a short presentation on a chosen subject relating to their cultural heritage and the main topics of the course. 

Further, assuming the interest of a much broader audience, we organize a public lecture on the subject of Music and AI during the course, and social events (music performance, concert, music film screening) open for all other summer course participants as well.

Target Group
The course intends to bring together graduate and post-graduate students, as well as junior researchers and music professionals from the fields of cultural heritage studies, ethnomusicology, film studies, sociology, ethnology, and social anthropology. We also accept applications from advanced undergraduate students who have adequate prior study or engagement experience on the subject and make a compelling case in their application/statement of interest. 
No pre-requisite is required.

The course focuses on the following discipline areas:

  • Cultural heritage studies
  • Ethnomusicology
  • Sociology
  • Ethnology
  • Social anthropology
  • Film studies

 

"This course was one of the most useful courses I have taken during my PhD studies. The course helped me to re-engage with my research from different angles while helping me to sharpen my research question. I am thankful to all professors for guiding me through this process."
"Perhaps the most important thing about this course was the team of people who flew in from all over the world. Thanks to the people, I had the opportunity not only to study the topics used in the course but also the traditions and beliefs of the course participants."

"I appreciated the thoughtfulness and care that seemed to be going on behind the scenes: efforts to make sure we felt supported socially and logistically, how to build a kind and emotionally supportive classroom environment, the time that went into designing our project groups."

"I thoroughly enjoyed this course. I would have actually loved to complete another week of it!"
"The course provided a nice picture of the current research trends in the field of ethnomusicology. We had a diverse group and I got to learn a lot from different people and researchers belonging to diverse contexts."

"I found the feedback and constructive advice from both staff and other students to be tremendously helpful in terms of my personal, professional, and project development goals. I felt the team and the other students were genuinely engaged and committed to facilitating discussion, fostering creative ideas, and allowing us to make connections with other academics who might be able to help us with project work in the future."

"I would recommend the course for many aspects in regard to it: the lecturers, the format of the courses that give the student the possibility to discuss the topics in small groups with advisors, the great organization team."

"Strong team leadership and cooperation, a great group of students that were actively participating and engaged, a convivial yet academically rigorous atmosphere, great balance between group and one-on-one advice and attention from staff, a wonderful variety of highly educated and experienced ethnomusicologists leading lectures."

Please read the following directions carefully. 
Below is the list of the documents you need to prepare or arrange for submission:

  1. Completed Online SUN Application Form (see notes below)
  2. Full Curriculum Vitae or Resume, including a List of Publications, if any
    Please upload your Curriculum vitae or resume, including a list of publications, if any.
  3. Statement of Purpose (max.1 page) 
    Please upload a Statement of purpose that describes how the course is relevant to your teaching, research, or professional work, and in what way you expect to benefit from your participation. Please highlight your relevant music and/or heritage education, describe any previous experience that you had related to the course theme, and list previous courses you have taken.
    You are advised to consult the detailed course description on the course web page so that the statement of purpose is in accordance with the main objectives of the course.
    Please provide the name, contact email, and phone number of a person (a faculty member, job supervisor, etc.) who can be contacted by the course directors to attest to your abilities, qualifications, and academic/professional performance.
  4. Personal Statement on Financial Aid
    Those who are eligible and wish to apply for financial aid should specify their reasons in the “Personal statement on financial aid” section (Funding page of the application form). 

Optional Attachments: 

You can upload further optional documents on the Qualifications page such as academic documents that you think may be relevant to support your application in the "Other Supporting Documents" section. All documents should be merged into a single PDF file not exceeding the size 2 MB. No passwords and encryption are allowed.

Completed CEU Summer University Application Form

We strongly advise the use of Google Chrome to enable the full functionality of the form.

Notes:

  • You may apply to a maximum of two summer courses. In case of being admitted, you can only attend both if the two courses do not overlap in time.
  • If you applied to CEU before, please use your existing login and password to start a new application. If you do not remember your password from last year click on Forgotten Password. With technical problems, bugs, or errors related to the online application forms please contact the CEU IT Help Desk.
  • Right after login, please select the ”Summer University” radio button from the "Type of course" list, and leave all other fields empty.
  • All application materials must be submitted with the online application form(s). Materials sent by postal mail, electronic mail, or fax are not considered.
  • The maximum allowable file size for upload is 2MB per file and the acceptable file formats are PDF, JPG, and JPEG. Ensure all security features (e.g. passwords and encryption) are removed from the documents before uploading them.
  • Applications cannot be edited after submission. Please submit your application only when it is 100% final and complete.
  • Further user instructions for the online application are included in the form itself. Should you have questions regarding the application form, check the relevant Frequently Asked Questions.
  • Applications submitted after the deadline will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Inquiries

If you need help or more information during the application process, please feel free to contact the SUN staff via email.

Notification

The SUN Office will notify applicants about the selection results in April. Please check the 'Dates and deadlines' section on the relevant course websites for notification deadlines planned earlier or later. The final decision is not open to appeal.