Lea Hagmann

Ethnomusicologist, radio journalist, filmmaker
Bern (BE)

Member of the jury since 2026

Dr Lea Hagmann is an ethnomusicologist. Her research interests include: (new) Swiss folk music, natural voices, the Swiss folk movement of the 1970s, music and dance revivals worldwide, Celtic music, Romani music, and Balkan music. Since 2018, she has been assistant professor of Cultural Anthropology of Music and programme director for the Master's programme World Arts and Music at the University of Bern. Since 2024, she has also been teaching music history at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Since 2019, she has been a committee member of the Swiss Society for Ethnomusicology (CH-EM). Previously, she was an Outreach Officer at the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) from 2019-2025 and a committee member of the European Seminar for Ethnomusicology (ESEM) from 2019-2022.

In addition to her academic work, she has been working as a freelance radio journalist at SRF2 Kultur since 2015. He responsibilities include programmes on Swiss folk music and ethnic music. In this context, she accompanied the SRG project “Jeunes Talents Suisses” in 2022, which was part of the Alpentöne festival. She also collaborates with various public institutions and museums, e.g. Forum for Swiss History Schwyz (2024-2025), Klangwelt Toggenburg (2024-2025), Stanser Musiktage (2024), Alpine Museum of Switzerland ALPS (2025), as a consultant, moderator, lecturer, or expert at public events. In 2023, she released her first documentary film Beyond Tradition: Power of Natural Voices. It received an award from the International Council of Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD) in 2023 and was honoured with the BFE-RAI Ethnomusicology Film Award in 2025. She is also co-editor of the Swiss Yearbook of Musicology, initiator of various podcast and, since 2025, a jury member for the German Record Critics' Award (PdSK) in the field of “Traditional and Ethnic Music”.