Irish Popular Culture from the 1990s to Today: A Green Wave Taking the World by Storm

International Conference (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France)
Thursday 4th and Friday 5th February 2027
Co-organised by Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (CIRLEP), Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (CREW) and Université de Tours (ICD)

Confirmed key-note speakers: Dr. Maria Parsons (IADT, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland), and Dr. Timothy Heron (U. Strasbourg, France)

Organising committee: Catherine Girodet (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne), Sylvie Mikowski (U. Reims Champagne-Ardenne), Erick Falc’her-Poyroux (U. Tours), Fabrice Mourlon (U. Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Deadline for paper proposals : 15th October 2026
Paper proposals (in English or French), no longer than 350 words, along with a 100 word biography should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected], by October 15, 2026.

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Come Together: A Conference of Beatles Scholars and Experts

Call for Papers for Come Together: A Conference of Beatles Scholars and Experts, to be held at Strawberry Field in Liverpool, 12–14 June 2027. The conference will bring together scholars, researchers and experts working across Beatles studies, popular music, cultural studies, history, literature, film and media, Liverpool studies, and related fields. Our keynote speaker will be the distinguished Beatles author and broadcaster Spencer Leigh.

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Performance Studies International Conference

The Eighth Performance Studies International Conference will be hosted by the School of Music, University of Leeds, on 15–18 July 2027 (both in person and online).  

The conference will address a wide range of musics, methodologies, questions, and practices relating to Performance Studies.

We invite contributions that reflect this diversity, including (but not limited to) early music, contemporary and experimental music, global musics, acoustic, popular, electronic and multimedia performance. We encourage a broad range of approaches including musical instrument studies, performance practices including historically informed approaches and analytical approaches to performance and recordings, contemporary and ‘extended’ instruments and techniques, psychological approaches to performance and audience research, and pedagogic research in music performance. However, any topic in the field of music performance studies will be considered.

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Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives Conference

The Ninth Biennial
Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives Conference
Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, United Kingdom
6–9 July 2027

Congregational music-making is a vital and vibrant practice within Christian communities worldwide. It reflects, informs, and articulates convictions and concerns that are irreducibly local even as they flow along global networks. The Christian Congregational Music Conference aims to expand the avenues of scholarly inquiry into congregational music-making by bringing together world-class scholars and practitioners to explore the varying cultural, social, and spiritual roles music plays in the life of various Christian communities around the world. We are pleased to invite proposals for the ninth biennial conference at Ripon College in Cuddesdon, near Oxford, United Kingdom, from Tuesday, 6 July to Friday, 9 July, 2027. The conference will feature guest speakers, roundtables, and workshops that reflect the ever-broadening scope of research and practice in Christian congregational music-making around the world.

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Rock for Change book launch

Fund raising rock concerts have been a major feature of the music scene since the first recognized event, the Concert for Bangladesh, was organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar in 1971. Since then, they have come in many guises, from small-scale local affairs to mega international extravaganzas with the causes they support including national and international disaster relief as well as more political objectives.

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Performance Studies Network International Conference

July 15–18 2027, University of Leeds

The Eighth Performance Studies International Conference will be hosted by the School of Music, University of Leeds, on 15–18 July 2027 (both in person and online). The conference will address a wide range of musics, methodologies, questions, and practices relating to Performance Studies.

We invite contributions that reflect this diversity, including (but not limited to) early music, contemporary and experimental music, global musics, acoustic, popular, electronic and multimedia performance. We encourage a broad range of approaches including musical instrument studies, performance practices including historically informed approaches and analytical approaches to performance and recordings, contemporary and ‘extended’ instruments and techniques, psychological approaches to performance and audience research, and pedagogic research in music performance. However, any topic in the field of music performance studies will be considered.

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The Elephant in the Room: Celebration, Commemoration and Cultural Contradiction

11th and 12th December 2026
Middlesex University, London.

If the 100 Club Punk Special, the first Sex Pistols single or the now infamous Bill Grundy interview can be taken as ‘year zero’, punk is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary. Yet anniversaries often tend to present linear narratives, stories of origin, and canonical histories. However, punk’s histories are multiple and contested, not least in notions of definition, timescale, musical and subcultural style. This conference therefore raises questions over the elephant in the room: what does it mean to celebrate 50 years of punk? What does it mean to celebrate a movement grounded in refusal, immediacy and a suspicion of both tradition and futurity?

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Hip Hop Diaspora: Memory, Technology, and the Politics of Electric Infrastructure

Global Hip Hop Studies 8.1 — Spring 2027
A special issue of the journal Global Hip Hop Studies (Intellect Books, Bristol, UK)

About Global Hip Hop Studies

Global Hip Hop Studies (GHHS) is a peer-reviewed, rigorous, and community-responsive academic journal that serves as a hip hop cipher examining and expanding the ‘fifth element’—knowledge—and its intersections with all the culture’s material, embodied, and conceptual forms. GHHS privileges the insights of people of colour and supports marginalized, subordinated, and disenfranchised global citizens engaged in manifesting progressive political and social change. GHHS is Open Access through a Subscribe to Open model. No APCs or submission fees are charged. Authors retain copyright.

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STAVE/OFF: Non-traditional Modalities of Musical Training in Popular Musics

One-day symposium at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK
15 July 2026

Laying the groundwork for an emerging regional network of scholars, this one-day symposium seeks to examine what musical ‘training’ means outside of the traditional binary of reading vs not reading music notation. With an emphasis on popular musics, we invite all kinds of music thinkers, makers, and facilitators to submit an abstract for a 15-minute talk, workshop, or demonstration. STAVE/OFF will be a jam-packed day of networking and brainstorming.

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RETROFUTURISM 4

Online Symposium, 27 & 28 August 2026

Since 2022, we have held a series of online symposia addressing ‘retrofuturism’, a term we use to denote the ways in which internet aesthetics invoke visions of utopia and nostalgia. From vaporwave and hauntology to chiptune and frutiger aero, music, sound, and audiovisual media have been central to these present-day entanglements of past and future possibility. Our previous symposia have looked at microgenres, nostalgia, and anemoia. For our fourth symposium—held in association with the Nostagain Network—we turn to the issue of materiality.

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