Madeleine Modin

PhD Madeleine Modin is a research archivist focusing on Swedish vocal and instrumental folk music. She is the General Editor of Svenskt Visarkiv’s scholarly journal Puls – journal for ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology.

In her research, Madeleine Modin has been interested in issues related to private and institutional collections and collecting, museum practices, cultural heritage, revivals, historical musical instruments as well as traditional hymn singing in the field of musicology, singer songwriters in the 1960’s, organology and music history research.

In 2018 Madeleine Modin defended her dissertation in musicology Perceptions and Presentations of historical musical instruments. A Study of the Stockholm Museum of Music History, 1899–1918 at Stockholm University. The study examines the early history of the museum today called Scenkonstmuseet (Performing Arts Museum), as well as the first approaches in Sweden to what later became the so-called early music movement with performances on historical instruments. For a period, the study was part of the Swedish Performing Arts Agency’s research project 2011-2014 Pluralize or Polarize: About cultural heritage, identity and popular education.

Modin was 2020-2021 part of  the research project Kreativa förflyttningar - musikaliska flöden i 1960- och 70-talens Sverige (Creative transitions: Musical Currents in Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s) and looked into the history of Vispråmen Storken, the most important club and stage for singer-songwriters/troubadours in Stockholm in the 1960’s.

Since 2021 she conducts a three-year research project funded by Riksantikvarieämbetet (The Swedish National Heritage Board) with the title Immateriellt instrumentbygge som folkmusikalisk materialisering (Intangible instrument building as folk musical materialization). The aim of the project is to investigate contemporary building of folk music instruments as an area where negotiations on historic authenticity and product development for a living tradition take place, with a special focus given to choices of materials.

She teaches musicology at Stockholm University.

Modin is or has been active in several networks, such as CIMCIM, (ICOM’s International Committee for Museums and Collections of Instruments and Music), is secretary of the Swedish committee of the ICTM (International Council for Traditional Music) and is on the board of the Svenska samfundet för musikforskning (The Swedish association of music research).