IAS Conference: Audiences, Publics, Experience: Rethinking Music Reception

There is a growing need for new interdisciplinary thinking about the reception of music and the kinds of experience music creates. Recent research in music and sound studies, often focused on 'listening', is fragmented across various methodologies and theories which need to be brought into dialogue – ranging from philosophical to empirical, psychological to anthropological, and quantitative to qualitative.

Moreover, musical experience is itself undergoing fundamental transformations, especially through cultural and technological shifts brought about by the influence of artificial intelligence, machine listening, recommendation algorithms, online platforms, and participatory technologies. Equally important are intensifying institutional mandates to 'engage' and 'develop' audiences, while concerns around the environmental impacts and ethics of music consumption in the Anthropocene, as well as issues of equality, diversity, and inclusivity, have become even more magnified post-COVID.

Drawing together musicology, anthropology, psychology, and sound, media, and cultural studies, the conference aims to progress foundational research on music reception today, to deepen our understanding of musical experience, and to establish a new interdisciplinary framework.

A programme for this two-day conference will be added closer to date.

Conference convenors:
Professor Georgina Born FBA, University College London
Dr Joseph Browning, City University of London
Dr Christabel Stirling, Royal College of Music

Speakers across the two-day conference include:
Keynote speaker: Professor Ana Maria Ochoa Gautier, Tulane University
Professor Georgina Born FBA, University College London
Dr Richard Bramwell, Loughborough University
Dr Joseph Browning, City, University of London
Professor Nils Bubandt, Aarhus University
Professor Naomi Waltham-Smith, University of Oxford
Dr Amy Cimini, University of California, San Diego
Professor Nicola Dibben, University of Sheffield
Bill Dietz, Bard College / Independent
Professor Eric Drott, University of Texas at Austin
Dr Luis-Manuel Garcia, University of Birmingham
Dr Christopher Haworth, University of Birmingham
Professor Donna Hope, University of the West Indies
Professor Sebastian Klotz, Humboldt University
Dr Sanne Krogh Groth, Lund University
Dr Lisa Amanda Palmer, De Montfort University
Professor Stephanie Pitts, University of Sheffield
Dr Robert Prey, University of Groningen
Dr Christabel Stirling, Royal College of Music
Dr Marie Thompson, The Open University
Dr Tom Western, University College London

Organised in partnership with the British Academy and the Royal College of Music