dr. KJ (Kristina) Kolbe

Biography

Kristina is an Assistant Professor in Sociology of Arts and Culture at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. She joined ESHCC after completing her PhD in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and working as a postdoctoral researcher in Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Overall, her work explores how intersectional inequalities of ‘race’, class and gender are reworked in and through culture, ranging from wider cultural discourses of migration, citizenship and belonging to concrete processes of material culture, media representations, creative labour and cultural production. Her particular research interests lie in the field of music and its relationship to urban multiculture, and in the contingent social effects of on-going diversity and inclusion discourses in the cultural industries, as well as in the relationship between a politics of cultural production and a politics of care. Kristina’s work draws from current debates in sociology, cultural studies, critical ‘race’ and migration scholarship and is informed by Feminist and postcolonial epistemologies. 

Publications

Books

(2024) The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of Diversity in Classical Music. Manchester University Press.

(Working manuscript) Cultures of Care? The Politics of Creative Work in an Unequal World.

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

Introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Gender, Sexuality, and State Violence: International Perspectives on Institutional and Intersectional Justice’. Societies (forthcoming). [with Ladan Rahbari, Conny Roggeband]

Making Genre: The Aesthetic Affordances of Governmental Funding and its Effects on Emerging Interdisciplinary Artists in the Netherlands. Cultural Trends (conditionally accepted). [with Sofia Viera]

‘The Art of (Self)Legitimation: How Private Museum Founders Narrate Themselves as Elite Actors in and Beyond the Art World’. Socio-Economic Review, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwad051Opens external

The Global Rise of Private Art Museums: A Literature Review. Poetics, 2022. [with Johannes Aengenheyster, Andrea Friedmann Rozenbaum, Olav Velthuis, Mingxue Zhang] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2022.101712Opens external

An Institutional Politics of Place: Rethinking the Critical Function of Art in Times of Growing Inequality. Cultural Sociology, 2022. [with Chris Upton-Hansen and Mike Savage] https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975520964357Opens external

Producing (Musical) Difference: Power, Practices and Inequalities in Diversity Initiatives in Germany’s Classical Music Sector. Cultural Sociology, 2022; originally published online in 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755211039437Opens external

Unequal Entanglements: How Arts Practitioners Reflect on the Impact of Intensifying Economic Inequality. Cultural Trends, 2022. originally published online in 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/09548963.2021.1976594Opens external

Playing the System: ‘Race”-Making and Elitism in Diversity Projects in Germany’s Classical Music Sector’. Poetics, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2021.101532Opens external

Figures of Crisis: The Delineation of Un/Deserving Refugees in Germany. Sociology 52(3): 534-550, 2018. [with Billy Holzberg and Rafal Zaborowski] https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038518759460Opens external

Book Chapters

‘Western’ Classical Music, Diversity Work, and its Colonial Imprints: Challenges, Limits, and New Directions’. In: Johnson-Williams, Erin; Kok, Roe-Min; Liao, Yvonne (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Music Colonialism. Forthcoming at Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

‘(Un)settling Hegemonies – The Institutional Challenge of Diversity Initiatives in the Classical Music Sector’. In: Bull, Anna; Nooshin, Laudan; Scharff, Cristina (eds.) The Classical Music Profession: Inequalities and Exclusions. Oxford University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197601211.003.0006Opens external

Book Reviews

‘Music Generations in the Digital Age: Social Practices of Listening and Idols in Japan Communications’. European Journal of Communication Research (forthcoming).

‘Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds’. Ethnic and Racial Studies (2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2021.2009895Opens external

‘Access, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the US’. Journal of Arts Management, Law, & Society, 51(4): 270-272 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/10632921.2021.1927279Opens external

‘Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts’. Cultural Trends, 29(4): 320-322 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1080/09548963.2020.1815176Opens external

Other writings and selected media outputs

‘Do diversity initiatives in classical music address – or unwittingly reinforce – existing inequalities?’. LSE Inequalities Blog. Blog post (2024).

‘The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of ’Diversity’ in Classical Music’. New Books Network podcast. Hosted by Dave O’Brien (2024).

‘Beyond the Global Boom. Private Art Museums in the 21st Century’. Public Report. University of Amsterdam (https://privatemuseumresearch.org/report/Opens external) [with Olav Velthuis, Johannes Aengenheyster, Andrea Friedmann Rozenbaum] (2023).

‘Report on the art world’s response to the challenge of inequality’. LSE Research Online (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103146/Opens external) [with Chris Upton-Hansen, Mike Savage, Nicola Lacey, and Sarah Cant] (2019).