Joep Janssen's research interests lie in the interdisciplinary approach to music history, with a particular focus on the analysis of musical topoi and the connection between nature, politics and identity in the 19th century. In his bachelor's thesis, he examined the historical development of the topos of ecstasy in Alexander Scriabin's piano sonatas. In his master's thesis on the musical topoi of the forest in 19th century piano music, presented at the Austrian Society for Music , he combined musical score analysis with literary, social and environmental historical processes. As part of the international conference "Music and Climate Change" at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, he delved further into the connection between music history and nature. Here he presented the thesis that art played a significant role in the context of changing attitudes towards the environment in the 19th century based on the "Appearance of two types of landscape in the piano character piece".

To the portrait of Joep Janssen