Power and responsibility in higher music education. Issues of bullying and harassment

Abstract

This article is based on the four-year project Conservatory Cultures, and was written by all five researchers in the project, based in four different European countries. The aim of the article is to review higher music education (HME) institutions’ actions in handling power and taking responsibility regarding issues of bullying and harassment in Estonia, Finland, and Hungary. All of the institutions discussed in the article had procedures and organisational bodies for handling such cases.

The article presents and analyses four cases with experiences of incidents related to bullying and harassment and macro structures aimed at preventing such issues. The research questions asked are: What are the challenges for HME in becoming a genuinely supportive and safe environment? And how can these challenges be met?

The article is based on a collaborative feminist method where the authors investigated their own experiences. Previous studies of bullying and harassment in music education, and Ahmed’s (2021) work on complaint, are the theoretical starting points. It concludes with providing recommendations to HME institutions on how to develop their work in handling bullying and harassment.