Audiences, Publics, Experience: Rethinking Music Reception

British Academy Conferences bring together scholars and specialists from around the world to consider and evaluate new research in the humanities and social sciences.

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.

You can download the programme for this two-day conference.

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
• Professor Donna Hope, University of the West Indies
• Professor Sebastian Klotz, Humboldt University
• Dr Sanne Krogh Groth, Lund University
• 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
• Dr Tomás McAuley, University College Dublin
• Professor Robert Adlington, Royal College of Music
• Professor Tariq Jazeel, University College London
• Dr Maria Fantinato G. Siqueira, Reed College
• Professor Matthew Gelbart, Fordham University

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Image: Goa trance party with lights and sounds, Psychedelic trance culture in Goa. Getty.