Musical Intersections: Gender, Digitality, Memory

11-12 March 2027, Graz

University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG)
Institute of Ethnomusicology

Symposium

The rise of social media and digital platforms has profoundly transformed the way in which music and dance are created, circulated, experienced and remembered. Musical practices can no longer be understood as exclusively physical or exclusively digital. Rather, they constitute hybrid experiences that are inseparable from the technological infrastructures that make them possible.

In a context characterised by the growing interconnection between physical and digital spaces, musical and dance practices, technologies and bodily expressions are becoming increasingly intertwined in complex ways, shaping new dynamics of cultural production, participation, identity formation and collective memory. Platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and music streaming services provide unprecedented access to the private lives and careers of artists and creators, and they foster active forms of audience participation through comments, remixes, viral challenges, duets, memes and audiovisual interactions. Digital platforms increasingly shape communication, social networks and cultural practices. They influence how subjectivities and senses of belonging and exclusion are formed, as well as how musical cultures are remembered, archived and reinterpreted over time.

Performers and audiences creatively negotiate musical identities by combining specific yet diverse sonic, symbolic and performative practices, reflecting sociocultural imaginaries of belonging. At the same time, digital spaces have become privileged environments for the performance of collective memories. Musical performances, artists and communities are continuously documented, circulated, remixed and archived within digital ecosystems, reshaping how musical pasts are remembered.

These processes are deeply gendered. Digital media are neither an impartial archive nor a neutral space for participation. Platforms influence whose voices, bodies and performances become memorable and authoritative, while others remain marginalised or excluded. Gender identities are therefore negotiated not only through musical and dance performances themselves but also through practices of documentation, circulation, archiving and remembrance. In this way, digital memory cultures can both reproduce historical inequalities and challenge dominant norms, creating new spaces of visibility.

At the same time, digital preservation practices give rise to new hierarchies and forms of power, raising complex issues relating to data ownership and protection, copyright, misinformation, algorithmic bias and the persistence of archival silences. The growing role of platforms in shaping cultural memory invites critical reflection on who controls digital archives, which musical histories become collectively remembered and which remain unheard or forgotten.

To address these concerns, this symposium explores the intricate relationships between musical and dance practices, digital technologies, gender and collective memory. We invite contributions that examine how digital platforms reshape the ways in which musical cultures remember the past, negotiate the present and imagine the future. We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives, including but not limited to ethnomusicology, historical musicology, popular music studies, dance studies, gender studies, media studies, digital humanities, anthropology, sociology and memory studies.

We encourage contributions that address, among others, the following topics:

* Musical performance practices on social media

* Viral dances, trends, challenges, and the audiovisual circulation of music

* Materialities and corporealities in the digital age

* Gender biases in digital conservation practices, microhistories, forgetting, and archival silences

* Digital collective memory, memory (web)sites, digital repositories, connective memory sites and cultural archive platforms.

* Digitality as a method and as a research field, including digital and/or multimodal methodologies.

* Imaginary worlds and collective memories, including artificial intelligence and post-truth in practices of memorialisation and multidirectional memory

* Contemporary and historical representations of music and gender in digital spaces

* Digital musicians and musical communities, including virtual artists, avatars, digital bands and AI-generated music

* Musical territorialities, spatialities and digital geographies. Digital spaces as musical lieux de mémoire, local and global collective memory, geopolitical conflicts and music on social media

* Streaming platforms, algorithms and gender relations.

We invite academics and professionals with an interest in these issues to submit proposals that contribute to broadening our understanding of the relationships between music, gender, memory, and digitalisation in the contemporary world. We strongly encourage women, BIPOC individuals, early-career researchers, people from the Global South and those belonging to under-represented socio-political groups to participate actively.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

• Individual paper abstracts should be within 250 and 300 words. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes.

• Panel or roundtable abstracts about specific topics should include a 300-word general abstract and 250-word individual summaries. The panel or roundtable should have a duration of 90 minutes.

• Workshop proposals should specify an objective and pedagogical approach or method along with an abstract of 350 to 500 words. The workshop should have a duration of 120 minutes.

DEADLINES FOR SUBMISSION

Proposals and abstracts should be sent by November 15, 2026 .

Each abstract should include name and surname, brief biography (100 words), institutional affiliation (when applicable), email, and technical requirements. The program committee will select proposals via a peer-reviewed process and notify participants of their acceptance by December 15, 2026.

LANGUAGE

Proposals and papers may be submitted and given in German or English. Presenters are asked to provide a translation of the paper in English at the symposium for the sake of wider understanding.

PUBLICATION

A publication based on selected presentations is planned as a tangible outcome of the symposium.

HOST INSTITUTION

The symposium will run in a hybrid format. In-person activity will be hosted by the Institute for Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. We kindly ask you to inform us of your preferred modality (online or in-person). However, we encourage in-person participation to facilitate a more fruitful academic exchange.

CONTACT

ORGANISING TEAM
Juan Bermúdez - University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), Martin Ringsmut - Universität Wien, Constanza Toledo - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw)

Musicologie.org, 56 rue de la Fédération, 93100 Montreuil. 06 06 61 73 41.

ISSN 2269-9910.

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Dimanche 6 Septembre, 2026