Denise Petzold is a PhD candidate at the Philosophy Department of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Her PhD project is positioned in the ‘Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music’ (MCICM) and supervised by Prof. dr. Peter Peters and Prof. dr. Karin Bijsterveld. In her research, she addresses the tension between innovating and conserving classical music. More particularly, she wants to understand how the symphonic canon and repertoire have been maintained in the last decades through different musical artefacts in practice, and how they might be subsequently "opened up". The study’s theoretical background is inspired by Science and Technology Studies as well as time-based media conservation theory (Museum Studies). Denise also teaches several courses at FASoS in the Bachelor Arts & Culture.

Previously, Denise has worked as an assistant curator at the contemporary art museum Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany, where she co-organised two large-scale exhibitions including their accompanying publications. She obtained both her bachelor’s degree (BA Arts & Culture) and her master’s degree (MSc Cultures of Arts, Science and Technology) from FASoS and graduated cum laude in both programmes. After completing a research internship at Tate, London, during her studies, Denise focused on the conservation of performance art, more specifically the role of documentation in shaping the lives of performative artworks in museums. For this work she was awarded the student prize for best master theses by UM.

Recent publications include: 

• Spronck, V., & Petzold, D. (2017). For the Sake of Experiencing: Technological Mediation between Installation Artworks and their Visitors. Kunstlicht, 38(4), 100-107.

• Petzold, D. (2018). Documents of Contemporary Cuban Performance Art: Pasts, Presents and Futures in Dialogue. In: Beitin, A. (Ed.). Art x Cuba. Contemporary Perspectives since 1989 (pp. 206-213). Aachen: Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst. Cologne: Wienand Verlag.