The Past, the Present and the Future of Popular Music Research in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe

IASPM CESE 1^st international conference, 11–12.09.2025

Organized by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music – Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (IASPM CESE) at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

IASPM’s Central, Eastern and Southeastern European branch invites submissions for its first international conference, focusing on the evolving landscape of popular music research in our region. As popular music continues to shape cultural narratives and social identities, we invite researchers from and of this part of Europe to contribute their (self-)reflections on the region’s historical contexts, contemporary practices, future directions, as well as on the ways in which their own work expands this field.

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Take Two: Expanding the Field of Music Production Research

Building on the success of the inaugural SMPR conference, we now turn our focus to Canada’s west coast, a region where the extraordinary natural environment inspires us to push boundaries and explore new ideas. It’s time for take two!

Using Victoria’s ecological diversity and soaring landscape as a metaphor, we have chosen three themes to map out research directions for Music Production Research (MPR): equity, diversity and inclusion; social responsibility; and innovation. We want to explore these themes both from within the MPR community, and also by turning our collective creativity outwards. At this conference, we aim to test the limits of conventional thought by fostering discussions about how music production and research can, broadly speaking, make a positive social impact.

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Mediterranean Byways. Music Across Borders Between Western Europe and the Maghreb

Transposition no. 14 (2026): “Mediterranean Byways”
Call for papers
Edited by Talia Bachir-Loopuyt and Karim Hammou

Approaches to music, whether in the field of musicology or the social sciences, tend to construct their objects and analyses in accordance with the divisions promoted by nation-states. Such a “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and Schiller 2003) is not without limitations. It can even result in intractable deadlocks, particularly when examining cultural phenomena that, although constrained by political borders, may also transcend them to varying degrees and in different ways. Paul Gilroy’s proposition (1993) – to construct the Atlantic space as a relevant scale for analysing Afro-diasporic cultural and political practices – and the discussions and research it has inspired have demonstrated the value of considering alternative divisions (Agudelo et al. 2015, Aterianus-Owanga 2024). The term “byways” in the title of this call is borrowed from René Gallissot, a historian specialising in the Maghreb, whose work sought to explore the “transnationalisation at work beneath the model of the nation-state” (Gallissot 2000: 149).

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Popular Music and Violent Conflict

Popular Music History Special Issue for November 2025

The twenty-first century is defined by numerous wars. Unlike the large-scale global conflicts of the 20th century, today’s wars are predominantly localized. More broadly, conflicts shape lives politically, socially, and privately. Popular music has always played a dual role in such contexts: it has been used to mobilize masses for war while also serving as a medium for resistance. Anti-war songs are plentiful, ranging from the Italian “Bella ciao,” through the pacifist anthems of the Vietnam War era, to modern examples of resistance during the Intifada. As long as violent conflict has existed, so too have songs of resistance, such as “Biladi biladi” (“O my country!”) from Egypt’s 1919 revolution, or “Min djibalina” (“From our mountains”), opposing colonization.

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Watching rap: Hip-hop music videos and visual cultures

Call for papers: Journal Étude de communication n° 65

Website: https://journals.openedition.org/edc

For some observers of the music industry, “the clip itself has become little more than the sheathing in which a song is enclosed” (Straw, 2018, 187). How, then, can we explain the popularity of music video streaming? According to the latest report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI, 2023), it accounts for almost as much as audio streaming when it comes to online music consumption (31% and 32% respectively). Does it mean that YouTube video consumers are losing interest in the visual presentation of music and that they are listening to music videos rather than watching them (Kaiser and Spanu, 2018)? It seems difficult to imagine that people listening to music videos are not at the same time engaging with visuals − especially when we consider the image centrality in rap music due to the genre specific “registers of authenticity and legitimacy” (Guillard and Sonnette, 2020). Since the beginnings of rap, music videos, but also album covers, photographs, magazine covers and promotional visuals have participated in the construction of an aesthetic and representations at the intersection of race, gender and class (Collins, 2004). Among other examples, Franck Freitas (2011) analyzes the way in which the music video for the song In Da Club by 50 Cent is part of a marketing narrative around racial authenticity. Emily Q. Shuman for her part shows how race is performed in the work of rapper Casey through a visual aesthetic (Shuman, 2021).

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Black Music Research Unit Petition – Call for Signatures

Dear Popular Music Scholars

On behalf of the Black Music Research Unit at the University of Westminster, we’d like to bring our petition to your attention. The petition is available here: https://bmru.co.uk/a-petition-to-preserve-and-celebrate-black-british-music.

You may be aware that we co-curated the first ever national exhibition of Black-British music at the British Library from April-August 2024. If you missed it, you can catch some highlights here: https://www.bl.uk/press/beyond-the-bassline-500-years-of-black-british-music-opens-at-the-british-library.

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Funk Music in Popular Culture Conference

Friday, April 25 & Saturday, April 26, 2025
Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, USA

Indie Lens Pop-Up, WBGU-PBS and the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio are proud to announce the Funk Music in Popular Culture Conference to be held on Friday, April 25 and Saturday, April 26, 2025. The Funk Music in Popular Culture Conference will serve as a celebration of the Independent Lens film We Want the Funk. This conference will also be a space for academics, graduate students, musicians, music industry professionals, music/sound recording retailers, fans and the public to engage in dialogue about topics related to funk music and its cultural influence in popular music, popular culture and beyond. The scope of the Funk Music in Popular Culture Conference is deliberately broad, with the intention of highlighting the interdisciplinary nature and the many different avenues of research and creativity related to funk music in popular culture.

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9th Rhythm Changes Conference Amsterdam 2025

The ninth Rhythm Changes conference, Jazz Futures, will take place at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (Amsterdam University of the Arts) from 28 to 31 August 2025, in conjunction with the University of Amsterdam and IMPRODECO (Improvised Music and Decolonisation, Utrecht University).

This four-day multidisciplinary conference features keynotes, academic papers and panels and brings together researchers, writers, musicians, critics, and others interested in jazz studies. From the moment it surfaced, jazz held a promise of progress, innovation, and novelty, embraced by modernists around the globe. At the same time, it was declared dead just a few years after it first appeared on record. With each new development and technology (from multi-tracking to AI), the naysayers have lamented that jazz had now taken a wrong turn, while others thought the latest direction would lead the music into a new and bright future. Neo- and retro-genres, next to fusions and
crossovers, have triggered – and continue to trigger – similar debates. Jazz studies have moved with those shifting discourses, too, interrogating some of their premises but ignoring others. Inevitably, ideas about the future of jazz hold ideas about its past. At stake are the relevance and urgency of the music and, by extension, its future.

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Sound on Screen IV

24-26 June 2025
Online / Oxford Brookes University

***PLEASE NOTE THE UPDATED FORMAT AND DATES: The conference will now be fully online on Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th June for individual papers, and in-person and hybrid on Thursday 26th June. For the final day, we invite three-paper panel proposals on any topic and position papers on the broader discipline and direction of screen music and sound studies. Individual papers are warmly invited for the opening two days only.***

The Sound on Screen research network at Oxford Brookes University are delighted to announce the call for papers for Sound on Screen IV, a three-day conference dedicated to exploring the intersection of sound, music, and screen media. We invite scholars and practitioners to submit abstracts for 15 to 20-minute individual papers, position papers, or complete three-paper panels that delve into any aspect of sound, sound design, or music for screen, emphasising innovative perspectives and methodologies.

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Sound on Screen: Music and Sound in Transmedia Franchises

Call for Chapters (Deadline Extended to 20th December 2024)

We invite contributions for an edited collection exploring the critical role of sound and music within and across transmedia narratives. As multimedia stories increasingly cross various platforms, it becomes essential to understand how audio elements contribute to world-building, character development, and audience engagement. This volume aims to gather interdisciplinary perspectives that examine the complexities of soundscapes, musical scores, and their transmedial implications.

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