The fifth SysMus Interview was conducted with Dr. Birgitta Burger in February 2021. Birgitta finished her MA degree in Musicology, Phonetics, and Information Processing in 2008 and obtained her PhD at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, in Musicology in 2013. From 2014 to 2016, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the project "Dynamics of Music Cognition" and from 2016-2019 she was a postdoctoral researcher in the project "Dancing to the same Beat" at the University of Jväskylä. Since 2019, Birgitta does research in the ERC-project (European Research Council) "Slow Motion: Transformations of Musical Time in Perception and Performance" at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Since 2020 she is the new advisor of the Sysmus Execute Committee.
C.S. (Claudia Stirnat): Hello Birgitta, thank you for doing this interview with me for the SysMus blog.
B.B. (Birgitta Burger): Hello Claudia, thanks for inviting me.
C.S.: What is your motivation to serve the Executive Committee as an Advisor?
B.B.: Well, of course to serve the whole area and field of Systematic Musicology and the SysMus community, which I actually got into rather late. I knew the conference, but somehow I didn’t actually manage to go to one of them myself as a student, but then I got into organizing the conference in 2016 in Jyväskylä because our Master students were so keen on doing it. Only then I really understood the value of SysMus because I was gifted to be in a good and large research environment and could basically go to the bigger conferences right from the start. So it was kind of a late start for me, but then I really figured also by organizing it myself how valuable this whole community is and how needed it is for the young scholars to get into this whole thing of conferencing and just have a place to experience themselves, to try out conferencing and networking and get to know like-minded people as well. I have been to the Summer Schools of Systematic Musicology a bit earlier and that was a quite nice environment as well, to get to know fellow students on the same level and just be able to exchange what you are doing and what you struggle with, so I figured that SysMus is actually the same thing and that it is really valuable for young, upcoming academics: to try out what academia is like and if that’s something for them; Master students for example who think „Should I go for a PhD or maybe not? I don’t know ...“. So that’s a great place to experience to what it would mean to become a researcher, to stay in academia.
And just to give something further, to just have the SysMus community benefit from my experiences in the field, also to provide some networking possibilities and just to give some advice here and there when it’s needed.
C.S.: That’s a valuable motivation, of course. And looking back, would you have participated in SysMus during your study as well if you had known it like this before?
B.B.: Possibly yes, but also there is always the issue of funding because usually I didn’t have that much of funding either. So then you start selecting conferences but yeah, if I had had the funding or if I had asked for more funding, I would have attended.
C.S.: Yeah, the good thing is that SEMPRE is offering some scholarships for students applying for funding to attend SysMus. So at least some students can benefit from it.
B.B.: True, yeah, that’s a good thing anyway.
C.S.: You already mentioned that you were the supervisor for SysMus16 and from your experience, who can organize a SysMus conference and what kind of skills should students have?
B.B.: Well, in theory, anyone can organize a SysMus. Of course, it helps if you have some conference experience, first participating yourself but then also that the university has some experience and maybe some backup. That definitely helps because then you don’t have to start from scratch but can build on existing structures. Good backup, meaning senior scholars, are useful to just bring more experiences and ideas in, how to do things and where to get funding from. So seniors that you can rely on and are also eager to support are very valuable. Otherwise, it’s a lot of work, yes, I guess for everyone it’s a lot of work but it’s fun work (most of it, of course some is annoying but that’s the case for anything). Some organizational skills obviously help so that you can structure yourself. And otherwise… just do it. 😊
And of course it depends on how much you want to do, how much you want to organize besides, e.g. the social program. That took us quite some time, I think, to figure all the options, to decide and to get all kinds of calls together. But of course, that’s up to you what you want to do. Always check with the university what they can offer to you because quite a lot of universities have these conference organizing teams. So they might provide already a conference submission system and a payment system and these kind of things. That was helpful for us to just building on and using them.
C.S.: And from your experience, we (Executive Committee) plan a year before the conference will take place for the host to start organizing the conference. What do you think, how much time does it take for the students to organize the conference? Is it manageable while doing their studies or does it take longer for the students to finish their degree, what do you think from observing your advised students?
B.B.: I think, we managed everything within 8 months because we got the hint quite late that we should organize it. But we also were a pretty big team so we could distribute the tasks quite well. One problematic thing could be applying for funding because there might be deadlines in whatever way. For us it turned out quite well because the deadlines in Finland were quite short, but we were also planning with money we didn’t have and were very happy when it was finally granted. It’s always good to have backup plans or be quick in re-planning in case funding does not get granted, since otherwise you might really run into problems. In some cases, funders require to apply more than 12 months before the conference, so that's something that should be taken into consideration before getting in touch with the Executive Committee to organize the conference. But as such, I'd say 9 months of planning time is sufficient. It will get very busy at times of the different deadlines and notifications (submission, acceptance announcements) and in the last one to two months before the conference because people keep asking things and you have to get things in shape. Have lists with everything you need and want to do (from program and proceedings book to a first-aid kit).
C.S.: And I guess it depends on the student how much effort he or she puts into organizing the conference and still working on his or her studies, so how they manage that.
B.B.: Yeah, sure. It also depends if it's Master students or PhD students and in which year they are, I guess, because PhD students are a bit more flexible in terms of their time organization because they usually don't follow courses. That was a bit our problem because we had a lot of Master students being in the organization committee and it difficult sometimes to find meeting times around their schedules. PhD students are a bit more flexible, also differently busy, so in the end it equals out, I guess.
C.S.: As far as I experienced SysMus16, you organized the conference very well, so it didn't seem to become too much of a problem.
B.B.: No, we were good in hiding the chaos, haha.
C.S.: Well, that's a skill, too, haha.
B.B.: I guess, that's a good skill to have when organizing a conference to have it appear as great. But it's always the case that you see the things that are not running well in the background but on the front level it's all fine. And you always want to make it more perfect than it should be.
Look forward to reading the second part soon about Birgitta's beneficial experiences, her opinion about the future trend of Systematic Musicology and the pandemic's impact on her work!