Orpheus Instituut welcomes Melissa Van Drie
24 september 2025Futures in Artistic research Fellowship
Orpheus Instituut welcomes Melissa Van Drie as Orpheus Fellow within the new programme Futures in Artistic Research. Her work explores cultural histories of sound and listening, bringing together performance, sensory practices, and multimodal research to open new horizons in artistic research.
Orpheus Instituut is pleased to announce the appointment of Melissa Van Drie as our first Orpheus Fellow.
Melissa Van Drie is an internationally recognised researcher and artist, specialised in cultural histories of sound and listening from the 19th to the 21st centuries. She holds degrees in music performance, musicology, theatre studies, and literature. Her research engages with sensory practices, performance, and material culture in knowledge production across the arts and sciences.
Her doctoral research at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle examined how modern sound technologies and practices of listening were shaped within late 19th-century theatre culture. Since then, Melissa has held fellowships at the University of Cambridge, the Sorbonne, EHESS Paris, and Maastricht University, where she developed multimodal approaches to listening in relation to medicine, media archaeology, and science and technology studies. Her most recent project, Sounds Delicious, funded by a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship at the University of Copenhagen, investigated the roles of sound and vibratory sensing in foodways, contributing to multispecies anthropology and the environmental humanities. Alongside this, she has designed courses and workshops on sound, ecology, and food at leading European art academies.
My practice is situated between historical research, artistic experimentation, and sensory exploration. I am particularly interested in how listening and vibration shape cultural narratives and open spaces for nonhuman agencies. The Orpheus Fellowship provides a unique opportunity to reimagine artistic research collectively, not only by advancing individual work but by contributing to the wider field’s future trajectories.Melissa Van Drie - Orpheus Fellow
As Orpheus Fellow, Melissa will contribute to Futures in Artistic Research, a programme designed to redefine the horizons of artistic research in music. Her fellowship will focus on developing collective frameworks that transcend disciplinary boundaries, engaging with Orpheus researchers and international collaborators to explore sound, ecology, and multimodal forms of knowledge production.
By bridging cultural history, artistic practice, and sensory methodologies, Melissa’s work exemplifies the transformative vision of the Orpheus Fellowship. Her appointment marks the launch of this new initiative, which seeks to catalyse emerging concepts and practices that will shape the discourse of artistic research for the decades to come.
We warmly welcome Melissa Van Drie to our institute and look forward to the future-thinking perspectives she will bring to our community.