Simon Walsh

BIAAS granted $4,970 to Simon Walsh in order to study the American occupation’s role in fostering the postwar image of Austria as “The Land of Music.” The grant funded a month-long research trip to Vienna and Salzburg where Walsh visited four archives, such as the Vienna City Library, finding unpublished essays and important newspaper articles. The research also included interviews with important Austrian cultural historians and musicologists on the intersection of music and politics in postwar Austrian. The grant culminated in Walsh’s introductory chapter to his dissertation, Music, National Identity and the Past in Postwar Austrian Literature, which he defended in May 2013, and will help expand the dissertation into a monograph.

Simon Walsh earned his Ph.D. in German from the University of Michigan and has since worked as a lecturer at the university.