Country of residence

Hungary

Brief introduction

Katalin Kovalcsik passed away on 30 January 2013. She was a funder of this Network and member of the Scientific Committee in the period May 2011 - March 2012 .

Education

PhD Ethnology

Academic profile

Dr Katalin Kovalcsik is a musicologist and ethnologist, senior researcher at the Institute of Musicology, Research Centre of Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences working there since 1979 and specialized in the music making of the Roma and Boyashes. She is a board member of the Gypsy Lore Society as the responsible for the Marian Madison Gypsy Lore Society Young Scholar’s Prize in Romani Studies submission, helping the able young scholars’ work. She is the representative of the Hungarian National Committee of the International Council of Traditional Music, that is the largest international scientific organization for the (ethno)musicologists researching traditional cultures. In the 1980s she was one of the founders of the collection of Romani photos, sound- and video recordings and musical transcriptions of the Institute of Musicology which is now one of the largest Romani collections in Europe. Her researches have been focused on Hungary, but she had fieldworks in the neighbouring countries, as well. In the 1980s her fieldworks were aimed at setting up a large audio collection of the music sung and played by Roma and Boyashes. After 1989 she published a great deal of materials for scientific and pedagogical purposes. From that time she investigated the new musical processes among the Roma in Hungary with participant observation (as PhD dissertation). After 2000 she has started to research the new crosscultural and integrational processes of the music making of the Roma and Boyashes as part of the local and regional musical life.  She has published eight own books (partly with co-authors) and more articles. She has given university courses and lectures at the University of Pécs and Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest. She has spoken Hungarian, English, German, Romani and Boyash Romanian dialects (spoken in Hungary).

Publications

Keywords

musicology, ethnology, anthropology, sociology

Contact

kovalcsik@zti.hu browse members list