Oliver Seibt studied musicology (with a specialization in ethnomusicology), cultural anthropology, and Japanese studies at the University of Cologne and gained his doctorate at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media for a dissertation that was published under the title Der Sinn des Augenblicks: Überlegungen zu einer Musikwissenschaft des Alltäglichen in 2010.
An Uchida fellowship by the Japan Foundation allowed him to collect materials for his Magister thesis on the Japanese domestication of “Western popular music” during a three-months stay in Japan in 1996. After having worked as a freelancer for EMI Music Germany (1998-2007) and as a research and teaching associate ("Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter") at the universities of Cologne (2000-2008) and Bern (2008-2009), he returned to Japan in 2010 for a three-months field research trip to the Tokyo visual-kei scene that was part of a multi-sited research project on the globalization of Japanese popular music he conducted as a post-doctoral research fellow of the DFG-Cluster of Excellency “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at Heidelberg University (2009-2012). Before he was appointed assistant professor of cultural musicology at UvA in 2016, he worked as interim professor for ethnomusicology at the universities of Cologne (2013) and Frankfurt am Main (2013-2015), and as a guest professor at the University of Vienna (2015-16).
As a guest lecturer, he has also taught at the universities of Maiduguri (Nigeria), Saarbrücken, Giessen, Bremen, Zürich, and Utrecht, at the University of Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt am Main and at the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim.
Oliver Seibt is co-founder and advisory board member of the German-speaking branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-D-A-CH) and served as its general secretary from 2012 to 2016.
His current research interests are in (the globalization of) Japanese popular music, everyday life music studies, and the role of the imaginary in musicking.
* in preparation Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge Global Popular Music Series), ed. by Oliver Seibt, David-Emil Wickström, and Martin Ringsmut. New York and London: Routledge.
* 2018 “The (musical) imaginarium of Konishi Yasuharu, or How to make Western music Japanese”, in Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project (SOAS Musicology), ed. by Reinhard Strohm. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 157-176.
* 2017 “J-Pop: Warum populäre Musik aus Japan nicht unbedingt japanisch klingt“, in Global Pop, ed. by Claus Leggewie and Erik Meyer. Stuttgart: Metzler, pp. 307-314.
* 2016 “Expeditions of desire”, in Seismographic sounds – Visions of a new world, ed. by Thomas Burkhalter, Theresa Beyer and Hannes Liechti. Bern: Norient, pp. 321-326.
* 2014 “Bekenntnis zu (einer post-interpretativen) Musikethnologie“, contribution to the “Diskussion: What Discipline? Positionen zu dem, was einst als Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft begann“, in Die Musikforschung 67(4), pp. 388-393.
* 2012 “Asagi’s voice: Learning how to desire with Japanese visual-kei”, in Vocal music and contemporary identities: Unlimited voices in East Asia and the West, ed. by Christian Utz and Frederick Lau. New York and London. Routledge, pp. 249-267.
* 2010 Der Sinn des Augenblicks: Überlegungen zu einer Musikwissenschaft des Alltäglichen (Studien zur Popularmusik). Bielefeld: transcript-Verlag.
* 2010 “Aus dem Rahmen gefallen: Ein Versuch mit Erving Goffman zu erklären, wann’s in der Musik witzig wird”, in Musik und Humor: Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung in der Musik, ed. by Hartmut Hein and Fabian Kolb. Laaber: Laaber Verlag, pp. 13-29.
* 2008 “Warum die Musikethnologie die Suche nach dem singenden Menschen mittlerweile eingestellt hat”, in Aspekte des Singens. Ein Studienbuch (= Musikpädagogik im Fokus, Band 1), ed. by Andreas Lehmann-Wermser and Anne Niessen. Augsburg: Wißner, pp. 50-64 (together with Sebastian Ferdinand Hamsch).
* 2004 “Don’t let me be misunderstood: Zur Verstehbarkeit populärer Musik”, in Musik und Verstehen, ed. by Christoph von Blumröder and Wolfram Steinbeck. Laaber: Laaber Verlag, pp. 300-311.
* 2004 “Katja Ebstein y el indiecito del Perú: La polifonía como método etnomusicológico aplicado a un Schlager alemán”, in Lienzo: Revista de la Universidad de Lima, No. 24, pp. 9-32 (together with Julio Mendívil).
* 2004 “Wer alles zu hören ist, wenn Katja Ebstein vom Indiojungen aus Peru singt, und was diese Stimmen in der Musikethnologie zu suchen haben”, in Die Musikforschung 57 (3), pp. 257-268 (together with Julio Mendívil).
* 2003 “Totgesagte leben länger – Überlegungen zur Relevanz der Musikethnologie”, in Die Musikforschung 56 (3), pp. 261-271 (together with Kerstin Klenke, Lars-Christian Koch, Julio Mendívil, Rüdiger Schumacher, and Raimund Vogels).
* An Introduction to Cultural Musicology (bachelor seminar with lecture)
* Methods in Cultural Musicology (= Analyse- en onderzoeksmethoden, block 1)
* Analyse- en onderzoeksmethoden C: zelfstandig onderzoek (together with Ashley Burgoyne and Rutger Helmers)
* On the formation, diversification and globalization of hip-hop (Theoretical perspectives on popular music and media, bachelor seminar)
* Towards a musicology of the everyday (master seminar with lecture)
* Musical Encounters (master seminar, Utrecht and Zurich)
* Japanese Gentlemen, please stand up! A history of popular music in Japan (lecture, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna)
* Menace II Society? On the formation, diversification and globalization of hip-hop (seminar, Cologne, Bern, Heidelberg, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna)
* Please lay down here on this turntable: An ethnomusicological self-analysis (seminar, Cologne and Vienna)
* Dentô ongaku: An introduction to Japanese traditional music (seminar, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna)
* Sounding Signs: Popular music and subcultural identity (seminar, Cologne and Frankfurt am Main)
* How to make things with sounds: Musicology and performance theory (seminar, Cologne and Frankfurt am Main)
* On alienated masses and subversive practices: An introduction to popular music studies (seminar, Saarbrücken and Frankfurt am Main)
* A history of ethnomusicology (lecture, Frankfurt am Main)