Alexander Carpenter named new Wirth Director

Dr. Alexander Carpenter joins the Wirth Institute 1 July 2021.

On behalf of the Faculty of Arts, the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies is pleased to announce that Dr. Alexander Carpenter will serve as the Institute’s next Director. Dr. Carpenter joins us from the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus, where he is currently Professor of Music and has also served as Director of Music and Chair of the Department of Fine Arts and Humanities.

A musicologist and music critic by training, Dr. Carpenter holds a PhD in historical musicology from the University of Toronto, an MA in music criticism from McMaster University, and a BMus from Brock University. Before coming to the University of Alberta in 2006, he taught music history and theory at the University of Prince Edward Island, McMaster University, the University of Western Ontario and the Glenn Gould School in Toronto. His research focuses primarily on the composers of the Second Viennese School and on the cultural and intellectual history of fin-de-siècle Vienna, but has also published on the topics of popular and film music.

Dr. Carpenter has been a research fellow at the Arnold Schoenberg Centre in Vienna, and a visiting professor in musicology at the University of Vienna and the University of Innsbruck. He also currently serves as the Chair of the Wirth Institute’s Academic Advisory Board.

Dr. Carpenter’s secondment to the Wirth Institute will formally begin on July 1st, 2021. He succeeds Dr. Joseph F. Patrouch, who has served as the Wirth Institute’s Director since 2011 and who will continue in his role as professor in the Department of History & Classics.