Mischa van Kan

I am senior lecturer in musicology specialized in popular music.

Teaching

My teaching spans various courses in musicology, in the arts and culture programme, music history courses in the teacher education programme for upper secondary school as well as in the music and sound design programme.

Research

My research interests entail jazz and popular music from Sweden and the Nordic countries and connect to ideas of music and the framework of nation-states with related issues like ethnicity, race and gender. They include transnational contacts in local and transnational context with links to the Nordic countries. I am also interested in music and media and the ways in which people use these to construct various meanings of music. Here, I focus specifically on sound reproduction media and their packaging, such as 78-rpm and vinyl records and the ways music is connected to (moving) images.

I am currently working on the interdisciplinary project “Historically informed design of sound synthesis: A multidisciplinary, structured approach to the digitization and exploration of electronic music heritage”, which is funded by the Swedish research council and in which I collaborate with researchers at KTH and KMH.

Commissions

Since 2020, I represent Sweden in the board of the Nordic branch of the IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music). I am also a member of the board of the Swedish Society for Music Research (SSM).

Publications

Selected publications

Van Kan, M. (2022). Modernism and Record Covers : Raising the Status of Jazz in Sweden. Cultural Sociology. 16 (2). 165-189.
Status: Published
Van Kan, M. (2022). Presenting the Studio on Record Covers : Changing the Understanding of Swedish Jazz Records. Popular music and society. 45 (4). 446-466.
Status: Published
Van Kan, M. (2022). Swedish Jazz in the United States : Swede and Cool. New York, Routledge.
Dunkel, M., Van Kan, M. (2019). Transnational Perspectives on Jazz in Germany. Jazzforschung heute : Themen, Methoden, Perspektiven. Berlin, Edition EMVAS. 19-36.
Van Kan, M. (2019). Monica Zetterlund : 1937-2005. Märkvärdiga svenska kvinnor : 200 kvinnor som förändrat våra liv. Stockholm, Bonnier. 76-81.
Van Kan, M. (2016). Cooling down jazz : Making authentic Swedish jazz possible. Jazz Research Journal. 10 (1-2). 137-156.
Status: Published
Van Kan, M. (2014). The Racial Imagination and Authenticity in Swedish Jazz : The Swedish Reception of Miles Davis’ Versions of Dear Old Stockholm. Jazz, Gender, Authenticity : Proceedings of the 10th Nordic Jazz Research Conference, Stockholm August 30–31 2012. 79-87.

Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)

Van Kan, M. (2016). Swingin' Swedes : The Transnational Exchange of Swedish Jazz in the US. Doctoral Thesis. Göteborg, University of Gothenburg. 315.

Chapter in book (Other academic)

Van Kan, M. (2021). Bengt Hallberg i utländsk jazzpress på 1950-talet. Bengt Hallberg : jazzpianist, kompositör, arrangör, pedagog. Vaxholm, Vax records. 198-211.