At RMC, research and development I organized across three main areas:
1. Scientific Research at RMC explores music, musical life, and music education, with a particular focus on contemporary music and its role in society. The work ranges from musicological research to music education research addressing topics such as musical participation and musical ecosystems. Together, these activities strengthen the knowledge base for understanding music as social and cultural praxes.
2. Pedagogical development (PUV) focuses on ensuring that the institution’s teaching and learning practices remain current and relevant, while also developing how pedagogy itself is taught – including how students are prepared to teach and facilitate learning in their own professional practice.
3. Artistic development (KUV) centres on building knowledge through artistic practice and forms a key part of the knowledge base within higher arts education. At RMC, it also underpins the conservatory’s largest principal subject area, Artistic Development Practice (colloquially “KUA”). In an international context, KUV is often positioned within the broader field of artistic and practice-based research.
RMC previously worked with a dedicated Research and Development strategy. While research is now embedded within the institution’s overall strategy, the former R&D strategy (available in Danish only) still offers insight into the considerations and priorities that have shaped this area within the institution.
Artistic Development Work (KUV) at RMC is shaped through ongoing dialogue with national and international peers. Projects are peer reviewed prior to dissemination in public and durable formats, to strengthen quality and support reflection and knowledge sharing.
At RMC, we see quality in artistic development work as something shaped through dialogue – both internally and in collaboration with other institutions in Denmark and internationally. This includes ongoing work to develop a shared language and shared frameworks for assessing artistic development across the field. To support this work, RMC has developed SITRE – a set of quality criteria and peer review procedures currently used in the assessment of artistic development projects.
Read the SITRE criteria in full here:
RMC hosts an institutional portal on the Research Catalogue – an international platform for artistic research. The portal provides public access to research expositions and offers insight into the artistic development work carried out by RMC’s researchers as well as former students from the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma Programme.
Through the portal, RMC researchers publish expostitions the bring together artistic material, documentation, and critical reflection in formats developed for practice-based research. The platform supports a wide range of media formats and enables artistic processes and outcomes to be communicated across media.
From September 15th –17th 2026, RMC hosts the international research conference Ambient Music – Critical Explorations, Wicked Problems, and Small Wonderments. Bringing together researchers, artists, and performers from across the world, the conference presents three days of presentations, audio papers, and performances exploring ambient music as an aesthetic practice and cultural phenomenon.
With participants from 17 countries, the conference examines the many forms and trajectories of ambient music — from local scenes and artistic traditions to streaming culture, sonic environments, and emerging modes of listening. The programme includes research contributions, audio papers, and live performances.
The conference is organised by the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University in collaboration with RMC.
Read more about the conference and register via the university information page here.
