A statement of support for the School of Music at Cardiff University

The Executive Committee of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music’s UK & Ireland Branch would like to offer our support to the School of Music at Cardiff University and to register our opposition to its proposed closure.

Cardiff University has announced the start of a consultation whose proposals, if realised, would entail the closure of the School of Music by the end of 2030.  With 234 students Cardiff is the largest university School of Music in Wales and one of the largest in the UK.  Staff and students were given less than 24 hours’ notice of the news, and were offered no opportunity to challenge its evidential basis or put forward counterproposals.

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Algorithmic Audiovisualities: Music and Media in the Age of AI

International conference, Nov 13-14, 2025
Online, Zoom
Deadline 11th May 2025

With advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), a wide range of musical and media forms—from live concerts with video projections, holograms, robotics, and mixed reality to multimedia installations, opera, theatre, video games, music videos, cinema, television, advertising, and documentary—are undergoing significant transformations. These changes affect live, streamed, and recorded performances, music production and reception platforms with algorithmic systems, and an array of software for sound, music, and video, all increasingly mediated by AI. This conference seeks to explore how AI technologies are reshaping the ways we create, interact with, and consume audiovisual forms and objects across local, transnational, and digital landscapes, while redefining values and practices in the cultural and creative industries. Together, these transformations contribute to what we term “algorithmic audiovisualities”—a phenomenon that encompasses the shifting, technology-driven modalities of contemporary audiovisual expression.

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The Artistry and Legacy of David Lynch

The death of David Lynch in January 2025 is an immense loss for cinema, television and art and media at large. Lynch is regarded as a ‘maverick’ and one of the greatest directors of all time, as reflected by two of his films being included on the 100 Greatest Films of All Time list, published by Sight and Sound in 2022. As well as directing ten full-length fiction films and television series, most importantly Twin Peaks, Lynch left many other works, such as short films, paintings and compositions, music videos, commercials and weather reports, and many unrealised projects. He also appeared as an actor, in his own productions and Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, where he  played John Ford. The originality, uniqueness and influence of Lynch on the work of other artists is best reflected by the term ‘Lynchian’, used to describe his own productions, as well as those of other filmmakers, trying to emulate the style or mood of Lynch’s films.

This special issue of Panoptikum, guest-edited by Ewa Mazierska and published in English, would like to honour Lynch, through examining his works, as well as his influence on other artists and different types of media.

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Joint NZMS-MSA Conference

Joint Conference of the New Zealand Musicological Society and the Musicological Society of Australia
29 November – 3 December 2025
Hosts: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Venue: Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts, University of Waikato, Knighton Road, Hamilton, NZ (see https://www.waikato.ac.nz/news-events/venues-and-event-services/hamilton-campus/the-academy)

Convenors: University of Waikato with support from Waikato Institute of Technology

The Value of Music/ology

Members of music departments as well as wider creative industries feel a keen sense of precarity at the present time. This sentiment persists despite growing research that highlights the benefits of music and creativity for individuals’ well-being, as well as social cohesion and belonging; and the determined efforts by those in higher education to productively mould curricula and research to the needs of a changing world. The existential threats are often framed in financial terms, though other issues of worth and relevance are implicated. In a saturated media environment, how can music and discourse around music cut through the noise? How can we articulate the broader importance of studying and understanding music – not only to students and various institutional bodies, but also to wider communities? Perhaps more than ever, there is a need for further consideration of how music and musicology (broadly conceived) may be considered to hold value in our modern world.

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Music and Cats

Online symposium
November 28, 2025 / 11:00-19:00 CET                                

The upcoming symposium will explore the surprisingly understudied nexus of music and cats. As companion animals to humans for several millennia, cats have influenced music-making in myriad ways. Felines have sparked the creativity of musicians and composers across genres, from Western classical music to contemporary popular music. They have served as muses and have inspired the composition of countless pieces – many of them about cats. The envisaged audience remains by no means limited to humans; today, we even encounter music explicitly composed for feline ears. 

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Musical Exile, Migration and Cultural Mobility

Melba Hall, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Friday 15 August 2025
Proposal deadline: 4 April 2025

When musicians become migrants, they often exert a profound influence on their new environment: transforming concert life, creating or reshaping music institutions, and contributing to music education. This symposium considers the significance of migration for music-making, examining themes such as identity and belonging; the transfer of repertoire and skills; stylistic hybridity and multicultural music-making; and music’s relationship to nationalism, xenophobia and protectionism.

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Hands on Sonic Skills

Practical experiential approaches to sound, music, and media in musicological education

Conference on December 11 & 12, 2025
Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Department of Musicology
Keynotes: Andreas Fickers and Joanna Szczepańska-Antosik

Media and technologies for synthesis, recording, processing, and distribution of sound have become important subjects of music research. Examples include the history of sound recording (Sterne 2003, Katz 2010, Horning 2013, Bennett 2019), the significance of technical devices in music scenes (Theberge 1997, Butler 2014, Herbst/Menze 2021), or musical analysis oriented toward sound and music production processes (Zagorsky-Thomas 2016, Hepworth-Sawyer et al. 2019).

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Special Issue of Rock Music Studies

Rock in South America: Argentina, Chile, and Peru

Guest Editors:
César Albornoz, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile.
Lisa Di Cione, Universidad de Buenos Aires; Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche; Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega”, Argentina.
Sergio Pisfil, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Perú.

Contact: [email protected]

Rock Music Studies invites article proposals for a special issue exploring the unique characteristics of rock music written, produced, and performed in South America, with a particular focus on music created in Argentina, Chile, and Peru from the second half of the 20th century to the present.

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Performativity(ies) of Memory(ies) Interdisciplinary Conference

Performativity(ies) of Memory(ies) Interdisciplinary Conference
23-24 October 2025
School of Education
Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo
Viana do Castelo, Portugal

The Performativity(ies) of Memory(ies) Interdisciplinary Conference is organized by the School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo and by the Research Institute for Design Media and Culture (ID+) in cooperation with the Polytechnic University of Cávado and Ave. 

About the event

The Performativity(ies) of Memory(ies) Interdisciplinary Conference aims to address the role of memory in contemporary creation by discussing:
– the process of creation and its relationship to memory work;
– memory as a territory under construction (bodies, texts, sounds, images, narratives) through artistic research; and
– the politics of memory in today’s societies and new forms of creation.
The objective of the conference is twofold: firstly, to convene a diverse range of interdisciplinary perspectives; and secondly, to bring together artists whose creative approaches bring their research practice closer to memory.

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Ethnomusicology Ireland

Ethnomusicology Ireland is the open-access, online, and peer-reviewed journal of ICTMD Ireland. We are now accepting contributions for the planned publication of EI 11 in 2026. For this issue, EI welcomes new research on the topic of broadcasting music and dance (contributions addressing any form of traditional or new media broadcasting are encouraged). We are particularly interested in contributions that address one or more of the following themes:

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Progressive Rock Today: Music, People, Politics

The 7th Biennial International Conference of the Progect Network for the Study of Progressive Rock
May 27-29 2026
Université de Strasbourg (FRANCE)

What is progressive rock today, and what is its relationship to its half-century-plus-long history? What are the connections between music, audiences, and cultural industries in the world of progressive rock? Knowing that it is impossible to answer these questions with simple formulas or definitions, we look forward to welcoming at the University of Strasbourg researchers from a variety of disciplines – musicology, social sciences, political science, economics, cultural studies, philology and so on – who can provide new perspectives to illustrate the countless articulations of the “prog phenomenon.”

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