Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #musicresearch, aggregated by home.social.
Wellbeing and the Performing Arts: Theories, Practices and Pedagogies
13th Annual International Conference of the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta, exploring wellbeing through research, pedagogy and practice across the performing arts.
📍 Valletta, Malta
📅 16–18/03/2027
Papers, panels, workshops, posters & films/screendance.
Deadline: 02/11/2026
SIMM Research Seminar #14: Participatory Opera & Music Theatre
A research seminar for postgraduate students, early-career and experienced researchers working on participatory opera and music theatre projects.
📍 Vienna, Austria
📅 24–26/02/2027
Deadline: 15/09/2026
https://www.simm-platform.eu/seminars/simm-seminar-15/
#MusicTheatre #Opera #ParticipatoryArts #MusicResearch #CommunityMusic
The Analytical Approaches to World Musics (AAWM) Journal invites ongoing submissions of documentary films, audiovisual essays, and multimedia works exploring music and sound cultures worldwide.
Submissions may include documentaries, performance analyses, interviews, audiovisual installations, experimental films, and more.
Rolling submissions
#Ethnomusicology #WorldMusic #MusicResearch #Audiovisual #DocumentaryFilm #VisualEthnomusicology #VisualAnthropology
MUSICultures
The peer-reviewed journal of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music invites submissions on ethnomusicology, traditional music, popular music, and music in Canadian, transnational, and global contexts.
Deadline: 01/10/2026
https://cstm-sctm.ca/publications/
#Ethnomusicology #TraditionalMusic #PopularMusic #MusicResearch #Musicology
#BFE Autumn Conference 2026: Fieldwork in Times of Precarity: Building Resilience
Online conference on care, resilience, ethics, wellbeing, and sustainable fieldwork in contexts of conflict, environmental change, displacement, and institutional precarity.
📍 Online
📅 24/10/2026
Deadline: 30/07/2026
https://bfe.org.uk/conf/bfe-autumn-conference-2026-online
#Ethnomusicology #Fieldwork #ResearchEthics #MusicResearch #EDI
PSN2027 – Performance Studies Network Conference
Call for papers, lecture-recitals, performances, and themed sessions on music performance across genres and methodologies, including practice research, performance analysis, pedagogy, technology, and global musics.
📍 Leeds, UK & online
📅 15–18/07/2027
Deadline: 14/09/2026
www.psn2027.co.uk
#PerformanceStudies #Musicology #PracticeResearch #MusicResearch #Performance
#AcademicJob | #PostDoc | #PhDStudentship
📍University of Jyväskylä, Finland
The Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body & Brain plans to recruit 6–9 postdoctoral researchers and 4–7 PhD students for 2027–2029. Projects span music and emotion, entrainment, social interaction, wellbeing, music therapy, computational modelling, psychometrics, and statistical analysis.
📅 Call expected: Aug–Sep 2026
https://www.jyu.fi/en/research/centres-of-excellence/mmbb
#MusicCognition #MusicResearch #MusicTherapy #ComputationalMusicology
C21MP / MOCReN Collaborative Research Challenge: Algorithmic Intervention on Music Platforms
Practice-based research challenge on algorithmic recommendation systems, streaming platforms, and “algorithmized selves”. Invites playful and reflexive interventions into Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, SoundCloud and related platforms.
Deadline: 24/07/2026
#MusicTech #PlatformStudies #DigitalMusicology #MusicResearch #AI
Music and the Extended Mind: Musical Intelligence in the 21st Century
📍 Florida State University
📅 5–6 May 2027
Conference on musical intelligence, AI, technology, creativity, and the “extended mind” in contemporary music practice.
Deadline: 07/07/2026
#MusicTech #AI #MusicResearch #DigitalHumanities #ComputationalMusicProcessing #ComputationalMusicology #DigiralMusicology #LLM #Musicology
Rhythm under the Microscope II: Microrhythm and Tempo Variability in Popular Music
📍 Vienna
📅 22–24 October 2026
Interdisciplinary conference on microrhythm, groove, and tempo variability, spanning analysis, perception, digital production, and embodied approaches.
Deadline: 01/06/2026
https://www.ethnomusicology.org/news/news.asp?id=726194
#MusicTheory #PopularMusic #RhythmS #MusicResearch #Ethnomusicology #Musicology
Postdoctoral Researcher – Islands in the Stream (#ERC)
📍Ca’ Foscari University of Venice / Kingston, Jamaica
Postdoc in ethnomusicology/cultural anthropology on climate-related disasters and music scenes in the Caribbean. Ethnographic fieldwork in Kingston, with interdisciplinary collaboration across the ERC I–STREAM project.
Deadline: 27/04/2026
https://www.unive.it/data/50362/?id=2026-UNVE000-0080386
#Ethnomusicology #Anthropology #MusicResearch #Musicology #HorizonEU #HorizonEurope
Music often appears to arise from intuition. Composers and producers describe the creative process as following a feeling for harmony, rhythm, texture, and timing. Yet listeners often respond to certain musical gestures in strikingly similar ways. A harmonic shift intensifies tension. A rhythmic change alters perceived movement. A melodic peak can create a moment of release.
These recurring reactions suggest that musical emotion does not arise from artistic intention alone. It also reflects how the human brain processes sound. Research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology shows that musical perception involves several interacting neural systems: auditory analysis in the cortex, emotional processing in limbic structures, motor synchronization with rhythm, and reward responses connected to expectation and resolution.
For composers, this perspective raises an interesting question. If specific musical structures engage attention, anticipation, and pleasure in consistent ways, how can this knowledge inform composition without turning music into a formula? Scientific understanding does not replace intuition. It clarifies why intuitive musical decisions often work and why certain musical forms reliably move listeners.
My new essay examines this intersection between artistic practice and neuroscience. It discusses how harmony, rhythm, melodic contour, and sonic texture interact with perception, memory, and emotional processing in the brain, and what this relationship means for the act of composing.
Here is the full essay:
https://tomkolbe.com/2026/03/14/the-neuroscience-of-musical-emotion-in-composition/
#MusicCognition #Neuroscience #Composition #MusicTheory #MusicProduction #CognitiveScience #MusicResearch #Psychoacoustics
That music can serve more than purely aesthetic or entertainment purposes is no longer a surprising idea. Across many cultures and historical periods, music has functioned as a means of regulating mood, attention, and bodily states. Over the past decades, clinical research has begun to examine these effects with greater methodological care. Within psychiatry and psychology, music-based interventions now appear in studies addressing anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and related conditions.
Structured musical interventions - such as guided listening, improvisation-based music therapy, or therapist-led sessions - can reduce obsessive symptoms, lower anxiety, and ease depressive comorbidity when used alongside established forms of treatment. Controlled studies report measurable improvements in anxiety and obsessive symptoms when music therapy accompanies standard care. At the same time, sample sizes remain limited, and further research is required.
Music also relates to cognitive and emotional mechanisms that are relevant to OCD. Studies indicate that individuals with obsessive-compulsive personality traits often show heightened sensitivity to musical tension and a strong preference for harmonic resolution. These observations suggest links between musical structure, predictive processing in the brain, and the regulation of intrusive thoughts.
The intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and musical practice therefore forms a productive field of investigation. Musical processes operate simultaneously on several levels: rhythm can synchronize breathing and autonomic activity, tonal expectation structures attention, and deep musical immersion alters the subjective experience of time as well as aspects of cognitive control. These characteristics make music a complex medium within therapeutic contexts.
I examined these questions in greater detail last year, focusing on anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive conditions, the current evidence base, and practical forms of music-based interventions in clinical settings.
Read the full essay:
https://tomkolbe.com/2025/08/25/music-based-interventions-for-anxiety-obsessive-compulsive-and-related-disorders-effects-applications-and-evidence/
#MusicTherapy #MusicAndMentalHealth #Neuroscience #Psychology #OCD #AnxietyResearch #MusicAndTheBrain #MusicResearch #MusicAndHealth
*Deadline extended to May 1st*
41st European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM)
Themes include ethnomusicological challenges, music and politics, and broader topics in music, sound, and dance research. Individual papers, panels, audiovisual sessions, and roundtables welcome.
📍 Palanga, Lithuania
📅 17–22/09/2026
Deadline: 01/05/2026
Japan’s musical traditions do not exist in isolation. Many of their early foundations developed through sustained contact with cultural currents from China and Korea.
In an essay I published last summer, I looked at these transregional connections and the historical processes that shaped Japanese music up to 794 CE, before the consolidation of court-centered musical systems. Rather than treating musical traditions as fixed or purely national categories, the text focuses on transmission, adaptation, and the limits of retrospective classification.
The essay discusses early forms of musical exchange, the movement of instruments, modes, and practices, and the broader cultural and political conditions under which these influences were absorbed and transformed. It also reflects on how later historiography tends to simplify or homogenize these processes, often overlooking their layered and contingent nature.
If you are interested in early Japanese music, East Asian cultural history, or the question of how traditions take form through contact rather than isolation, you may find the essay useful.
#MusicHistory #JapaneseMusic #EastAsianHistory #CulturalExchange #MusicResearch
In the study I would like to briefly introduce here, the focus is on the relationship
between meditation and music – a pairing that is widely discussed, yet often without
much precision.
The study examines how music that reliably induces aesthetic chills interacts with
meditative processes, with particular attention to affective intensity,
self-transcendence, emotional permeability, and subjective insight.
Open access study:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1589132/full
In the study I would like to briefly introduce here, the focus is on the relationship between meditation and music – a pairing that is widely discussed, yet often without much precision.
The study examines how music that reliably induces aesthetic chills interacts with meditative processes, with particular attention to affective intensity, self-transcendence, emotional permeability, and subjective insight.
The work does not establish clinical efficacy. Its relevance lies in showing how music can modulate inner states that, in clinical contexts, are regarded as markers of change. The analysis is process-oriented and based on self-reports rather than clinical outcomes.
In medical terms, this is not therapeutic evidence, but a contribution to understanding state-dependent mechanisms – potentially of interest to both musicians working with affect and clinicians concerned with contextual modulation.
Open access study:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1589132/full
#MusicResearch #Neuroscience #Psychology #Meditation #AffectiveStates #Musicians #Clinicians
4th Symposium of the ICTMD Study Group on Sound, Movement, and the Sciences (SoMoS)
📍 Lisbon, Portugal
📅 23–26 September 2026
Papers combining ethnographic/anthropological and science-based approaches to sound and movement in music and dance. Hybrid format.
Deadline: 27/02/2026
https://ictmusic.org/studygroup/somos/post/call-papers-4th-symposium-ictmd-somos
#AcademicJob | #PhDStudentship
PhD Studentships in Music – The Open University
Two funding schemes for candidates starting PhD study on 1 October 2026:
• AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award (full studentship)
• Music Department Fees-only Studentship
📅 Deadlines:
13/02/2026 (AHRC)
31/03/2026 (Fees-only)
https://fass.open.ac.uk/music/research-degree/phd-studentships
Just arrived at @ircam_paris for #improtech . Setting up the Sophtar in studio 5, this afternoon at 16:30 I will presents the instrument and its distinctive techniques, and improvise with different algorithms and models. #sophtar #musicresearch #newinstruments
Echoes of Traditional Music in Central Eastern Europe in Times of War and Peace
A special issue of the Czech Ethnological Journal „Český lid“ (in English) focusing on #ethnomusicology:
Exploring how traditional music and dance shape identities, politics, and heritage in Slavic-speaking countries, in wartime and peacetime contexts.
Deadline: 31/12/2025
#MusicResearch #Heritage #SoundStudies #Musicology #Ethnology
International Conference on Timbre 2026
📍 Montreal
📅 2–4 July 2026
Interdisciplinary perspectives on timbre across music, sound studies, perception, #AI, acoustics, humanities, and creative practice. Research papers, lightning talks, posters, artistic reports, panels, and workshops invited.
Deadline: 15/12/2025
16th ICTMD Mediterranean Music Study Group: The Mediterranean as Sonic Tourbillon
📍 Ege University, Izmir, Türkiye
📅 1–5 June 2026
Individual papers, panels, roundtables welcome.
Deadline: 15/12/2025
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdpprgKSyby_rHLPpG18Ceq2syhB06gaD8g71CtzUqmX91VCQ/viewform
#Ethnomusicology #ICTMD #MediterraneanMusic #MusicResearch #SoundStudies
Special Issue: Feedback Musicianship
Journal of New Music Research (Taylor & Francis)
Seeking articles on the theory, practice & design of feedback instruments and systems. Topics include #composition, #performance, #cognition, #HCI, #cybernetics, #history, #pedagogy & more.
https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/feedback-musicianship/
#MusicTechnology #Feedback #MusicResearch #MusicScience #Musicology
Here's something a little bit different that we're looking forward to sharing soon... 📋🐦⬛
#Research #Music #MusicResearch #Musician #Musicians #Bands #MusicIndustry #Interviews #MusicCommunity #Mirlo #IndieMusic #IndieMusicians #DIYMusic #DIYMusician #DIYMusicians #NewMusic
Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology vol. 21, no. 2
Theme: "Ethnomusicology Now"
Open call for student articles, creative work, professional insights & news items. Welcoming first-time authors & voices beyond the Anglosphere.
📅 Deadline: 01/09/2025
my latest blog post, which is quite niche but is a process I wish I had known about earlier in researching American folk music (in my case, obviously #klezmer, but the same process could be used for a lot of genres). hope it helps someone in their research at some point. I used Ukrainian-American fiddler Pawlo Humeniuk as an example because he rules.
https://alte.klezmor.im/2025/07/22/how-to-order-old-ukrainian-music-scores-or-other-heritage-folk-music-from-the-u-s-library-of-congress/
#MusicHistory #LibraryOfCongress #MusicResearch #UkrainianMusic #LOC #MusicArchives
Music and Sound after Covid-19
📍Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini
📅 8 July 2025
A one-day international seminar exploring post-pandemic creativities, technologies, and soundscapes. Organised by the Intercultural Institute for Comparative Music Studies & the Institute of Music.
#Ethnomusicology #VisualEthnomusicology #SoundStudies #Covid #PostCovid #MusicResearch #Venice #Cini
AAWM Journal: Film & Multimedia Submissions
Now accepting #Documentary films, visual essays, and multimedia works exploring analytical and cultural dimensions of global music/sound worlds.
Include subtitles + 1,500 word reflection. Ongoing call.
#Ethnomusicology #MusicResearch #VisualEthnomusicology #EthnographicFilm #EthnographicFilmmaking
Ethnomusicology and Space(s)
Joint Autumn Conference: British Forum for Ethnomusicology & Société française d’ethnomusicologie
📍 Senate House, London
📅 17–19 October 2025
Papers exploring #Sound, #Space, #Performance, #Diaspora, and #DigitalMediation in #Ethnomusicology. Creative formats welcome.
Deadline: 15/06/2025
Between Research and Activism: Futures of Music and Minority Studies
📍 Vienna, Austria (on-site)
📅 12–14 February 2026
Explores intersections of #Ethnomusicology, #Activism, and #SocialEngagement; focuses on #Minorities and #Power through the lens of #Interdisciplinarity.
Deadline: 15/07/2025
#MinorityStudies #SoundStudies #ActivistScholarship #MusicResearch #AppliedResearch #ParticipatoryActionResearch #PAR #CollaborativeResearch #Anthropology