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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Popular Music and/as Resistance

AMS-SMT Joint Annual Meeting – Minneapolis, MN – 6-9 November 2025
Application Deadline: 7 March 2025

The relationship between popular music and politics is louder than ever. At the 2025 Super Bowl halftime performance, an ostensibly politically neutral platform, Kendrick Lamar offered a socio-economic critique of racial inequity in the United States when his all-Black dancers performed in the shape of the American flag. Similarly, queer pop icon Chappell Roan’s 2025 Grammy acceptance speech took aim at the industry’s failure to offer artists a living wage and pledged $25,000 towards healthcare for developing musicians—a donation matched by Noah Kahan and Charli XCX. Northern Ireland rap group Kneecap also received several accolades at the 2025 BAFTAs despite consistent (and scathing) lyrical indictments of British imperialism and their role in the recent construction of a “Free Palestine” mural in West Belfast. As evidenced by the swell of online discourse in the aftermath of these statements, artists and other cultural intermediaries are never exempt from criticism regarding the limitations of their efforts to combine performance and politics. Still, these same musicians—and by extension, their audiences—are always operating within the constraints of a profit-driven and politics-averse music industry.

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Queer Survival, Organizing, and Worldmaking

Inaugural Summer School of the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group
22nd – 25th July 2025, Humboldt University, Berlin

School’s out for summer, or is it? The LGBTQ+ Music Study Group is excited to announce its inaugural Summer School, to be held from 22nd to 25th July at Humboldt University, Berlin in collaboration with the Emmy Noether research group “Sound System Epistemologies: Knowledge engendered through practice”.

This event will celebrate the rich histories of queer organizing and mutual aid, with a focus on the politics of LGBTQ+ worldmaking. Thinking through the politics of place, we seek to amplify Central and Eastern European queer sonic histories in one of the globe’s so-called “gay havens,” attuning to Berlin’s famously queer electronic dance music and nightlife, though submissions are welcome on any queerly musical encounters.

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Rock Music, Belonging and Citizenship in the English-speaking world (1950s-2020s)

In the first chapter of the Resistance through Rituals volume (1975), Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke and Brian Roberts essentially approach rock music and its associated “subcultures” in neo-Marxist terms as a mode of cultural resistance of the working class against capitalist hegemony. They view the various rock “subcultures” of their time – the Teddy Boys, the Mods, the Rastas- as vanguards of a renewed class consciousness, heralding emerging forms of political mobilisation that could ultimately pave the way to revolution. While this perspective was of course proved wrong, and in fact was heavily criticized from the start, including by members of Hall et als.’s own Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies group (CCCS), it has remained influential, if only because it construed the academic study of rock music through a socio-political lens, attributing as it did a central place to the question of belonging and citizenship in XXth century liberal democracies.

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Re­think­ing Mu­sic Her­itage con­fer­ence

Research Institute, Sibelius Academy. The conference addresses the various forms of music heritage and is the closing event of the research project “Diversity of Music Heritage in Finland.”

About the conference

The University of the Arts Helsinki is pleased to announce an international conference on the various forms of music heritage. The conference is the closing event of the research project “Diversity of Music Heritage in Finland”, funded by Kone Foundation in 2023–25. The conference is co-organised by the History Forum and the Seinäjoki Unit of the University of the Arts Helsinki.

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SME 25: CONVERSATIONS & improvisations 

Conference Theme: Sound and Physicality
Kitt School of Music / Northern Arizona University, September 19-21, 2025
Proposal Deadline: April 15, 2025

Sound, Meaning Education (SME) invites researchers, artists, and teachers to submit proposals for an in-person conference to be held at Northern Arizona University, September 19-21, 2025. The conference will gather all manner of curricular innovators to share research/scholarship, pedagogical strategies, narratives/stories, performances, and imaginings for the purpose of building infrastructures that support sound and meaning explorations within teaching and learning contexts.

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Networked Creativity: Musicking in the Social Media Era

Journal of Sound, Silence, Image and Technology (JoSSIT)
Number 9: Networked Creativity: Musicking in the Social Media Era
Issue editor: Juan Bermúdez (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz)

Deadline for submission: 4 July 2025
Publication date: December 2025

Journal of Sound, Silence, Image and Technology (JoSSIT) is an open-access, peer-reviewed electronic journal published annually. Since 2018, it has been edited within the SSIT research group, linked to the TecnoCampus university center, affiliated with Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). The journal focuses on academic debate and scientific research concerning the broad relationship between sound and audiovisual contexts.

JoSSIT’s ninth issue, coordinated by Juan Bermúdez (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz), will explore the practice and experience of music in short audiovisual formats on digital platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. This issue will gather multidisciplinary research to understand how digital platforms and contexts influence the practice and experience of music and dance.

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Peripheries, Margins, and Ambiguities across Borders in SouthEast Asian Popular Music

IASPM-SEA 2025: National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Dates: 6 – 8 August 2025

Tides of continued globalisation bring with it condensations of time and space that brought together previously separated and isolated cultures and communities. Whether it be by movements of people through migration, trade and voyages or by movements of objects and ideas through exchange, media or the internet – the question inevitably arises: can culture be owned by any community, nation or group? As cultures and people collide in unpredictable, asymmetric and chaotic ways, power dynamics emerge and offer some the opportunity to spread their culture further while threatening some with erasure, forcing communities to find new ways of integrating Into this connected world. As these varying power shifts and dynamics continue to play out in these regions, one asks how popular music highlighted the blurring, configuring and (un)marking of borders and boundaries in SouthEast Asia and beyond.

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Talkin’ ‘bout A Generation: Mod Study Day

July 13, 2025
Hosted by Liverpool Hope University
School of Creative and Performing Arts

The Creative Arts team members at Liverpool Hope University are delighted to announce an interdisciplinary study day that honours the 60th anniversary of the release of the Who’s “My Generation”, the formation of the Small Faces, and many other moments that coalesced together to intensify the Mod movement. This study day will be held on July 13, 2025 at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, located in Liverpool’s vibrant city centre. Following the study day, there will be a performance of The All or Nothing Experience in our Capstone Theatre. After three sell-out tours and a successful West End run of All or Nothing – the Mod Musical, writer Carol Harrison and the show’s multi-talented cast, will perform the new, All Or Nothing Experience Concert Show, celebrating the music of the iconic mod band Small Faces.

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Society for Music Production Research 2nd Annual Conference

Society for Music Production Research 2nd Annual Conference
September 11-13, 2025 • University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada

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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