CIM22-Participation

June 8-10, 2022
We are delighted to announce the next Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, 'Participation', co-convened by the Reid School of Music, The University of Edinburgh and the Department of Music, University of Hong Kong. Guided by the aims of the Society for Interdisciplinary Musicology, to foster dialogue between the sciences and humanities, our theme of Participation invites cross-disciplinary reflection and dialogue across a range of current topics in music research.

Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and singular […] [Art’s] function and consequence are to effect communication, and this not by external accident but from the nature he [the artist] shares with others’.

John Dewey (1934/2005), Art as Experience, 253, 282.

Making music is an inherently unstable activity involving the learning of not only musical ideals in rhythm, sound and gesture, but also learning to negotiate the values associated with practices and the values that people bring to such music-making.

Kyra Gaunt (2002), ‘Got Rhythm?: Difficult encounters in theory and practice and other participatory discrepancies in music.’, 134-5.

Participation intersects both material and theoretical issues in music scholarship. Space carved out by Keil et al’s (1987, 1995) dialogic conceptualisation of musical participation has, over the past thirty years, been filled with empirical research into the actions and interactions through which music takes shape in performative social life and mind. The ongoing legacy of an extensive body of scientific music research - into expressive microtiming, co-ordination and joint action, for example - is now complemented by the most current views in cognition which accept that our comprehension of musical sound is shaped by participatory rather than individualistic processes. Participation suggests various situations of interaction, from events of (face-to-face and online) community, to encounters imagined in solitude. As a theme, Participation also highlights music’s integration into other domains of individual and social experience: Its compact with cultural and political identity (and the influence of such in educational contexts), its varied presentations through personal and technological expression, and its complex relationship with health and wellbeing.

Participation opens up a number of topics and fields, for example:


 * Empirical performance research on co-ordination, joint action etc
 * Community music/applied research as sites of musical participation
 * Music cognition including enactive perspectives (e.g. participatory sense-making)
 * Historical contexts for (and critiques of) musical participation
 * Critical music pedagogy and curricular renewal in related areas
 * Participation as methodology, including ethnographic vs participant observation
 * Media, virtuality, and participation

Submission opens soon for interdisciplinary proposals reporting new research from scholars and practitioners at all career stages. The event format will include keynote presentations, regular papers, roundtable discussions, and video flash-talks. Please visit and bookmark the CIM22 conference website for submission information and updates.