Louis Petitjean - Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung - Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Research Institute Assistant at the Musical Instrument Museum

Louis Petitjean is a PhD student at the University of Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne, a member of the HiCSA "Histoire Culturelle et Sociale de l'Art" laboratory and is under the joint supervision of Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna under the direction of Dominique Poulot and Sandra Costa. His doctoral thesis focuses on the dissemination of organological knowledge in Europe in the late 19th century, with an emphasis on Asian instruments from Indochina and Japan. His archival work includes musical instrument museums in Brussels, Florence and Paris. He is working on a cartography of the exchange of organological knowledge and on the history of collectors such as Alessandro Kraus in Florence. In parallel, he is conducting research in the field of museology, with an investigation into museum cartels, particularly at the Musée du Quai Branly.

2026

• "Dumoutier, Mahillon and the making of a Tonkinese and Annamese collection" in Fañch Thoraval, Saskia Willaert (ed.), Mahillon, Museums and Musical Distance, London, Routledge (to be published). 
   

2025

• "Towards a sound remediation? Unmuting musical instruments held in ethnographic collections", Museum Material Discussion. Journal of museum studies 2, n°1 "The repairing museum", 2025, online [https://mmdjournal.unibo.it/article/view/21601].
• [Interview] Avec Yaël Kreplak, "Alexandre Girard-Muscagorry : " Le musée insiste désormais sur la pluralité des musiques et des mondes "", Analyse Opinion Critique, samedi 10 mai 2025, online [https://aoc.media/entretien/2025/05/09/alexandre-girard-muscagorry-le-musee-insiste-desormais-sur-la-pluralite-des-musiques-et-des-mondes/]
   
• [Book edition] With Nazan Maksudyan, Julio Velasco, Sarah Kiani (eds.), Interdisciplinary Auralities: Materialities, Epistemologies, and Sensorialities of Sound, Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, University of Heidelberg, 2025 (to be published).
• "Rompre le cordon ombilical qui relie le musée au Conservatoire. Une histoire conflictuelle du patrimoine musical dans la France contemporaine" in Dominique Poulot (ed.) L'effet patrimoine: transmissions entre ruptures et continuités, Laval, Presses de l'université de Laval, 2025 (to be published).