Project team

Verena Freytag grew up in Hamburg and Münster. She studied Philosophy, General Linguistics, German and Sport at the University of Münster and the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and completed her studies with the First State Examination. This was followed by a traineeship and the second state examination for secondary school teachers in the subjects of German and sport.

Between 1998 and 2013, she was a teacher for special tasks in sports teacher training at the universities of Düsseldorf, Gießen and Paderborn. In each case, she taught physical education and headed the dance, design and performance department. She has developed numerous participatory choreographies and pieces with students and pupils and performed them at various festivals (e.g. "Tanz in OWL"). Verena Freytag received her doctorate in sports education from the University of Paderborn in 2011 and focused on creative processes in dance in her dissertation.

Verena Freytag has been Professor of Aesthetic Education and Movement Education at the University of Kassel since 2013. She teaches there in the educational and social science core study program and cooperates with colleagues from the fields of music, visual arts, social work, philosophy, political education and educational science. Her focus is on qualitative dance pedagogical research. She has developed the podcast "Moment:Aufnahme!", where she talks to cultural practitioners about questions of aesthetic and cultural education.

In her current research project Watchin' Dance (together with Music Education, University of Kassel), she is investigating how young people perceive contemporary dance productions on stage. In this project she cooperates with TANZ_KASSEL (Staatstheater Kassel).

Susanne Dreßler studied at the University of Music and Theater Leipzig "Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy" and at the University of Leipzig to become a secondary school teacher for music and German. This was followed by supplementary studies in piano pedagogy and elementary music pedagogy.

From 2007 to 2010, she worked as a research assistant on various research projects at the University of Bremen. She completed her doctorate there with a qualitative study on choir and wind classes at all-day schools. This was followed by a traineeship at a grammar school in Giessen, where she completed her second state examination. Between 2012 and 2014, she worked as a research assistant at the universities of Kassel and Bielefeld, including in a research project on the "An instrument for every child" program. She also taught in the field of music education / music didactics.

From 2014 to 2015, she held the professorship for music education at the University of Siegen, where she organized an interdisciplinary conference on problem solving in subject teaching. She then took over the junior professorship for music education at the European University of Flensburg and has also been head of the Music Department since 2018. There she created the podcast "Reingehört! Musikpädagogische Erkundungen" podcast together with students and the faculty and conducted various discussions in the field of music education research, teaching and practice. In 2021, she completed further training as a music and sound therapist alongside her work.

Since March 2022, she has held the professorship for music education at the University of Kassel. Her research focuses on music pedagogical conceptual research (problem solving, aesthetic experience, appropriation) and qualitative-empirical research into music pedagogical projects as well as school and teaching research (musical elementary school, all-day school).

The current research project Watchin' Dance (together with Aesthetic Education, University of Kassel) is investigating how young people perceive contemporary dance in digital spaces (e.g. TikTok, Instagram) and what role music plays in this.

Julia Brennecke studied to become an elementary school teacher at the University of Kassel, majoring in mathematics, German and sport, and graduated with her first state examination in 2023. In her final thesis, she conducted a qualitative study on the reception of contemporary dance. Since 2024, she has been a research assistant in the Watchin' Dance research project at the Institute for Music at the University of Kassel.

Together with the Department of Aesthetic Education and Music Education (University of Kassel), she is investigating how young people perceive contemporary dance productions on stage and contemporary dance in digital spaces (e.g. TikTok, Instagram).