Her research considers how social and political practices might intersect with music making after 1945, issues she explored in her recent book, Making New Music in Cold War Poland: The Warsaw Autumn Festival, 1956–1968, a study of cultural mobility and Transnationalism at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music. Jakelski’s work has also appeared in the Journal of Musicology and Twentieth-Century Music. She has received numerous honors and awards for her work, including a fellowship in 2007–08 at the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities.