CfP: 15th International Jazz Research Conference, Graz (Austria); “Jazz and the Popular”; Deadline: 15.9.2025
CfP: 15th International Jazz Research Conference, Graz (Austria): “Jazz and the Popular”
09—11 April 2026
Hosted by the Institute for Jazz and Popular Music Research and the International Society for Jazz Research at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria
For the first time, the renowned Institute 16 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz hosts its International Jazz Research Conference as “Institute for Jazz and Popular Music Research”. Popular music is now officially expanding the Institute’s remit and enriching the study of jazz methodologically and conceptually – and vice versa.
Our 15th International Jazz Research Conference is dedicated to “Jazz and the Popular”, aiming to celebrate, reflect, enhance and advance the study of jazz and popular music, both within and outside academia. By situating jazz and popular music within broader academic ecosystems, this conference seeks to reimagine the potential of interdisciplinary research and to map emerging directions in the field.
We welcome papers addressing the conference theme from multiple perspectives, including musicology, cultural studies, jazz history, media studies, sociology, music analysis, sound studies, digital humanities, and practice-based research. We particularly welcome contributors who identify as women or gender diverse and from other under-represented groups and communities within jazz studies and academia more generally. Within the general theme, we have identified several sub themes: please clearly identify the theme(s) that your proposed paper will engage with.
Among the Disciplines
This strand invites critical reflection on how jazz and popular music operate as both subjects of research and agents of knowledge production across diverse scholarly terrains. How do disciplinary boundaries shape the way jazz and popular music are studied, taught, and understood? In what ways can methodologies from adjacent disciplines enrich or challenge the analytical tools of musicology? How can collaborations between researchers, artists, industry professionals, and institutions foster new forms of knowledge production? We invite contributions that interrogate the ways in which intersections of jazz and popular music enrich or complicate our understanding of musical meaning, identity, and circulation.
Global Perspectives
This strand seeks to understand the broader meanings and values associated with jazz in different global settings. We welcome papers that explore the contested histories of jazz as well as approaches that map the music onto wider theories of globalisation, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, diasporic encounter, and/or colonial and post-colonial discourses. What counts for jazz in different global contexts and how has jazz played a role in mediating major transformations in the relationship between high art and popular culture? In what ways does the idea of jazz speak to diverse communities throughout the world, for example on themes of freedom, spontaneity, virtuosity, improvisation, individuality, collectivity, conflict, or oppression?
Gender and Diversity
In jazz, a focus on gender and diversity challenges us to ask whose voices have been heard or silenced and how power, identity, and experience shape expression, access, and community. Exploring these issues means confronting exclusion whilst also imagining jazz as a space of resistance and renewal. This strand invites responses that consider how gendered experiences and diversity interventions influence jazz – music and culture – across performance, teaching, curating, and scholarship. We seek contributions that question binary, cis-normative, and male-dominated models of practice, interaction, and theorization and that offer new perspectives as well as amplifying marginalized voices.
Education
Jazz education plays a vital role in preserving, transmitting, and evolving the cultural heritage of jazz, while fostering creativity, socio-cultural knowledge, and musical collaboration among students. How has jazz pedagogy – both in general schooling and in specialized instrumental instruction – evolved? Who teaches jazz to whom, and in what institutional settings? How can jazz be effectively integrated into school curricula, and extracurricular jazz projects? What teaching materials and methods have been used and how have they been adapted to cultural shifts? Who and what is missing from jazz pedagogy, and how can we address this? Indeed, what is/should be the future of jazz in music education? This strand invites contributions that explore various aspects of jazz pedagogy in different educational contexts, and from interdisciplinary and innovative perspectives.
Jazz and the Digital
This strand explores the manifold intersections between jazz and digital technologies. How does the digital shape the way jazz is produced, distributed, and perceived today? What challenges and/or potentials emerge through digital tools and virtual collaboration? How do streaming platforms, online archives, and social media influence the visibility and accessibility of jazz in the 21st century? How can digital methods – including music analysis software, machine learning, or data visualization – contribute to the scholarly understanding of jazz practices? We invite papers that critically engage with the evolving relationship between jazz and the digital sphere.
Formats and Submissions
Individual paper (20 min. + 10 min. discussion): abstract of no more than 250 words
Joint panel (60 min. + 30 min. discussion): themed session with three individual papers of 20 min. each; abstracts max. 250 words per paper, plus a session overview of max. 250 words
Roundtable session (60 min. + 30 min. discussion): outlining abstract of up to 400 words.
Deadline for proposals is 15 September 2025.
Please submit proposals together with a short biography (max. 50 words) and institutional affiliation as a Word document to the Conference Director Christa Bruckner-Haring at jazzpopresearch_conference[at]kug[dot]ac[dot]at, subject line “proposal jazz and the popular conference”.