CfP: Sound, Motion, Fear: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Affective Experience (22.-25.04.2027, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz) Deadline: 01.11.2026
Call for Papers
Sound, Motion, Fear: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Affective Experience
April 22-25, 2027
University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz
Fear manifests across sonic, kinetic, social, and institutional arenas, shaping research, education, performance, and daily life. Sound, Motion, Fear invites interdisciplinary contributions that explore how fear is lived, negotiated, and transformed in and through musical and movement-based practices. In a musical context, fear appears to be an ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, it is often associated with anxiety, vulnerability, and exclusion. On the other, by amplifying, channeling, reframing, and expressing fear, music and movement can give rise to powerful aesthetic experiences, distinctive artistic practices, and forms of collective engagement.
The conference Sound, Motion, Fear is conceived as a peer-oriented space for advanced Master’s students, doctoral candidates, and early-career researchers. By foregrounding early-career perspectives, the conference seeks to create an environment in which questions of fear – whether aesthetic, embodied, institutional, or academic – can be explored openly, critically, and without hierarchical pressure. The event is explicitly interdisciplinary, and aims at bringing together perspectives from musicology, ethnomusicology, ethnochoreology, choreomusicology, music theory, artistic research, music pedagogy, music therapy, music aesthetics, cultural studies, and related fields.
Submission guidelines
The following formats are accepted: paper, poster, roundtable, panel, lecture recital, lecture performance, and workshop.
Abstracts of 200-250 words in English or German should be submitted via https://forms.gle/y2zLVFZAcWKZ7FpW6
First call: 10 June 2026
Submission deadline: 1 November 2026
Contact smf.graz.2027[at]gmail[dot]com with any questions.