XXII Biennial IASPM International Conference

Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
June 26–30, 2023

Theme: Popular Music in Crisis

It is not hyperbolic to claim that crisis characterizes the state of the world in the 2020s. The COVID-19 virus still rages across the globe. In many countries, this public health crisis intersects with a crisis of political legitimacy caused by increased polarization and the rise of right-wing populism. The refusal of many to vaccinate themselves against COVID-19 has led to the continuing spread of the disease. Elsewhere, similar dynamics are exacerbated by lack of effective vaccines, little-to-no capacity to make them, and the hesitancy of wealthier countries to distribute vaccines beyond their national borders. An ever smaller number of people control most of the world’s wealth as the gap between the wealthy and the poor has become a seemingly unbridgeable chasm. The ongoing crisis of climate change manifests in many ways: increasingly dangerous storms, displaced populations, out-of-control fires, financial and material devastation, rising sea levels, and more, unfortunately exacerbated by politics and the destructive impact of late capitalism. Wars, civil and otherwise, have also increased the numbers of migrants whose home countries are devastated but who are not welcomed elsewhere, leading to a crisis of the displaced and, with the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine compounding continued struggles in Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Syria, and many other regions, heightened tension between global powers that at times evokes the Cold War. The rise of neo-fascism has accompanied the return of dangerous nationalisms that attempt to disenfranchise certain members of society, often by race, gender, and sexuality, while reinforcing existing social and racial constructions. Other crises abound, as white supremacy rises again in North America and Europe, women’s rights are under attack in various repressive regimes across the globe, and we learn of human rights abuses perpetrated during military crises and civil unrest.

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Opening Up: Reconnecting, Remixing, Remastering 

IASPM-ANZ 2022 Conference: Call for Papers

Conference Dates: Wednesday 7th – Friday 9^th December 2022  

Venue: RMIT University City Campus, Latrobe St Melbourne and online

Organising Committee: Catherine Strong, Shelley Brunt, Ian Rogers, Tami Gadir, Sebastian Diaz-Gasca, Olivia Guntarik 

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 2022 IASPM-ANZ conference, to be held at the City Campus of RMIT University.

There will also be options for online presentations for members who cannot attend in person.

The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Opening Up: Reconnecting, Remixing, Remastering’. The last two years have seen a complete upheaval to the music world that we study, and to our own lives as educators in this field. As we restart, we invite papers that consider any aspects of how popular music and popular music studies have responded to a changed world, including examinations of what might not have changed. Questions that might be considered include: 

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Challenge and Change in Popular Music

The 2022 IASPM-UK/Ireland Branch Conference
Liverpool, August 31st – September 2nd

https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/music/events/iaspm

Conference Themes

As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting social and economic crises, proposals are invited for papers that respond to contemporary global challenges and changes. Whether informed by the experiences of individuals, cities, nations or global communities, papers might respond to:

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Starting Over? Popular Music and Working in Music in a Post-Pandemic World

University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

May 22-25, 2022

IASPM-Canada and the Working in Music research network (WIM) invite abstracts for their joint 2022 conference, to be held at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada.

The IASPM/WIM 2022 joint conference welcomes scholarly research from all disciplines that engages with the changing contexts of musical practice experience—music making, the circulation of music, musical pedagogy and fandom, music and social movements, and various other dimensions of musical engagement—playing, dancing, streaming, listening.

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IASPM-US 2022 Conference: Grooves and Movements

IASPM-US 2022 Conference: Grooves and Movements
May 26-May 28, 2022
Ann Arbor/Detroit Michigan

The International Association for the Study of Popular Music-United States chapter (IASPM-US) invites proposals for its annual conference, which will take place in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan on May 26-28, 2022. We welcome abstracts for individual papers, organized panels, roundtable discussions, and alternative (non-paper) presentations on all aspects of popular music, broadly defined, from any discipline or profession. We especially encourage submissions on the many rich popular music histories of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Detroit.

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IASPM Early Career Researcher Conference

IASPM Early Career Researcher Conference, October 21st 2021

IASPM warmly welcomes papers from emerging academics* for a day-long conference that will take place this coming Autumn. This event aims to bring together scholars with new and exciting ideas to discuss and share their work at the vanguard of popular music studies. There is no restriction on topic area, however applications prioritising new work are strongly encouraged. In particular, we are seeking papers that address current concerns in popular music, such as:

• gender equity in the music business
• music and social justice
• music education and decolonising the curriculum
• popular music in the digital age
• music and wellbeing
• live music and night-time economies post-COVID 19
• income streams and business models in the music industries
• popular music and the environment

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Afro-Futurism. Arena Rap. The Self-Producer. A Popular Music Research Day

Join us for an interactive Popular Music Studies Research Day with renowned speakers Laina Dawes, Steve Waksman and Paula Wolfe. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/afro-futurism-arena-rap-the-self-producer-a-popular-music-research-day-tickets-151480441077

Join us for an interactive Popular Music Studies Research Day with renowned speakers Laina Dawes, Steve Waksman and Paula Wolfe to discuss: what it means to be a black artist, the advent of arena rap, and the poetry of the recording studio.

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Big Sounds from Small Places

IASPM Canada Annual Conference 2021 Call For Papers
Virtual Conference
7 – 18 June 2021

Submission Deadline: 15 January 2021

As we enter into a new decade it’s apt to question our place in the world. Almost sixty years ago, Marshall McLuhan notably coined the term Global Village to refer to the global spread of media content and consumption, and yet Canada still struggles with its position in the world as an imposing landmass with a relatively small population, and how that influences where and how its cultural texts are encountered. This conference seeks to address the concept of voice and sound as tied to space and place, in the broadest sense. In regards to popular music in Canada, we have established a strong identity, but one that is often defined in opposition to our more vocal neighbours to the South. As we continuously define and redefine Canadian cultural identity, and cultural outputs, this conference questions how our musical landscape has historically adapted, and will continue to adapt, to an increasingly globalized environment.

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“Climates of Popular Music”, 21st Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music

The most pressing issue for humanity in the 21st century is global climate, and thus IASPM’s 21st Conference turns its attention towards this subject. Whereas our 20th anniversary conference considered where we have been, we now ask where we are now, what we are doing as a species, and what impact it has on our communities and our world. On a planet increasingly interconnected by a dizzying array of media channels, such a discussion has to be broadly framed. Our planet’s climate is impacted by numerous forms of human activity, including those that are individual, personal, local, communal, institutional, commercial, corporate, cultural, political, and international. This conference invites presentations that ask how popular music relates to our climate, where climate relates to any part of the totality of surrounding conditions and circumstances affecting growth or development. By “climate,” we intend to include a range of definitions, including ecological climate, political climates, socio-political climates, and contextual and individuated climates. We ask presenters to consider the impacts of activities related to popular music and its cultures on variously defined climates, and the impacts of changing or changed climates on different popular music and its contexts.

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IASPM UK&I London Calling Conference

IMPORTANT INFO FOR THOSE PLANNING TO ATTEND THE ONLINE CONFERENCE:

1. If you haven’t registered on Eventbrite by 5pm UK time on Monday 18th May (Click Here To Register) we can’t guarantee we can process you in time for the first keynote on Tuesday with Mykaell Riley – although you will still be able to watch it on the website – just not participate in the discussion. You can continue to register after that and we will process people as quickly as we can.
2. On Tuesday morning we will email everyone who has registered with the conference login details. People who register later will be emailed separately.
3. We can only let 100 people into the keynote Zoom sessions but you can also watch the session live on the website and use the comments section to ask questions. (There are nearly 200 people registered at the moment and still rising). Details of the ‘door policy’ for the Zoom session will be announced in the login email on Tuesday morning.
4. Every week there will be some streamed performances after the keynote and, for the most part, they are musicians without other income so please support them by contributing something through the PayPal.Me links under the YouTube Live screens on the website.

The website for the event is here: https://london-calling-iaspm2020.com