Music in the (sub-)Arctic
Posted: March 16th, 2026 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | Comments Off on Music in the (sub-)ArcticMonday 7 – Tuesday 8 September 2026
Faculty of Music, Schwarzman Centre for Humanities
Keynote Speakers
Professor Tina K. Ramnarine (Royal Holloway, University of London)
‘Artifact and Aspiration: Notes on Music, Minorities and Cosmologies in the Subarctic’
Professor Philip Ross Bullock (Wadham College, University of Oxford)
‘Fire and Ice: Sonic Survival and Soviet Pianism in the GULag’
Dr Aimar Ventsel & Dr Eleanor Peers (University of Tartu; Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)
‘Singing the Universe: the Political Ecologies of Sakha Popular Music’
Rationale
Despite the perceived quietude of the vast empty white spaces of the Arctic and the boreal forests of the sub-Arctic, music has had and continues to occupy a central place in the lives of its inhabitants. The regions are home to some of the world’s most popular composers, musicians, and pop groups. For the (sub-)Arctic’s Indigenous communities, music can function as a form of empowerment, identity expression, community healing and linguistic and cultural revitalisation.