2026

The Department of Music Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, in collaboration with the Royal Musical Association ‘Music of Eastern Europe and Eurasia’ Study Group are organising a conference on the theme of ‘Women in Music.

The role played by women in various aspects of musical life has gained increasing attention since the emergence of feminist approaches to musicology in the 1980s, thanks to the application of feminist theories in various humanistic disciplines slightly earlier, as well a broader revisionist turn in Music Studies at the time, usually referred to as New Musicology. In the course of the past four decades significant efforts have been made to bring to the fore and explore, on the one hand significant aspects of the hitherto undervalued presence and contribution of women in (among others) musical creation, performance, music consumption, music scholarship, music education, and, on the other hand, to address the necessity for revisionist approaches to musicological scholarship. Nevertheless, the field of musicology is still a long way from achieving balanced accounts of gender participation in music making. At the same time, recent scholarship has increasingly foregrounded gender as a relational, historically contingent, and culturally situated category, inviting critical reflection on the very terms through which ‘women in music’ have been conceptualised and studied.

The conference ‘Women in Music’ aims to help remedy this gender imbalance in Music Studies by shedding additional light on women’s involvement in various aspects of musical life since the early 20th century. Specifically, it aims to focus on a wide variety of historical and cultural contexts, with an emphasis on the geographical areas of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, while at the same time covering a wide spectrum of sub-disciplinary areas in the field of Music Studies.
Papers could address, but do not need to be limited to, some of the following aspects:

• Women as performers
• The role of women in musical creation both in and beyond art musical traditions (i.e. in various cultural contexts)
• The role of women in music education
• Women as cultural consumers/listeners
• Women as scholars, researchers and music critics
• The role of women in leadership positions, promoting music making either as agents in cultural institutions or on account of their particular position in various cultural contexts

The conference encourages the representation of as many areas of music making and musical cultures as possible, aiming at a comparative perspective that will make a new contribution to the state of the art. Consequently, we encourage submissions associated with (among others) the sub-disciplines of Historical Musicology, Aesthetics, Music Analysis, Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Studies, Music Pedagogy.
The conference places particular emphasis on women’s musical activities in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, with a primary focus on the period from 1900 onwards. Submissions engaging with these geographical and temporal frameworks will be prioritised.

The conference official language is English.
Paper proposals of no more than 250 words and short biographical notes of approximately 100 words should be submitted by 20 April 2026 to the following email address:

womeninmusicconference@gmail.com

Organising Committee
Eleni Kallimopoulou, Magdalini Kalopana, Katerina Levidou, Nick Poulakis, Angeliki Triantafyllaki, Markos Tsetsos

Scientific Committee
Pauline Fairclough, Eleni Kallimopoulou, Magdalini Kalopana, Elaine Kelly, Katerina Levidou, Ivana Medić, Nick Poulakis, Angeliki Triantafyllaki, Markos Tsetsos

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Founded in 2006, the BASEES Slavonic and East European Music Study Group (SEEM) organises regular events across the UK and abroad. SEEM brings together scholars working at the interface of musicology and Slavonic/Eastern European studies and seeks to foster international and interdisciplinary connections to support research on music and cultural life across the region. 

Our 2026 colloquium will celebrate the 20th anniversary of SEEM’s foundation. It is intended to provide an opportunity to reflect upon the current state of research on music and musical life across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet space. 

We invite proposals on the following topics: 

• The development of musicology in Slavonic/Eastern European countries after 1991
• Music historiography and musicological traditions in Slavonic/Eastern European countries 
• Post-Soviet cultural identity in Slavonic/Eastern European countries
• Musicological networks and institutions in Slavonic/Eastern European countries
• Nationality as a paradigm in contemporary Slavonic/Eastern European music
• The reassessment and decolonialisation of former Soviet repertoires since the dissolution of the USSR
  

We also welcome proposals for presentations on cognate topics beyond these themes, and are especially interested in featuring contributions on subjects that have received limited attention in English-language scholarship. 

The event is open to researchers at any career stage, including postgraduate researchers and independent scholars. The working language of the conference will be English.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words and short biographical notes (c.100 words) should be sent to reemstudygroup@gmail.com by Friday 17 April 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent in mid-May. 

We hope to be in a position to offer small bursaries to graduate students and presenters without access to institutional support. If you wish to be considered for a bursary, you should indicate this in your covering letter when submitting your abstract. Please be aware that our funds are limited and it is unlikely that we will be able to cover participants’ costs in full.

The colloquium will be conducted in alignment with BASEES’ current policies on participation in its annual conferences and research events. We welcome all students and scholars who oppose Russia’s war on Ukraine. Anyone supporting Russia’s war, or justifying it in any way, will not be welcome. Colleagues based in Russia or Belarus will participate in a personal capacity. BASEES’s anti-harassment policy will apply. 

SEEM co-convenors: Daniel Elphick, Christoph Flamm, Christina Guillaumier, Katerina Levidou, Ivana Medić, and Patrick Zuk.

Enquiries should be sent to reemstudygroup@gmail.com

Event format: In-person only.

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Keynote Speakers:

Peter Schmelz (Johns Hopkins University, USA)

Martha Sprigge (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

Melita Milin (Institute of Musicology at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia)

Miško Šuvaković (The Faculty of Media and Communications, Serbia)

Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman (Faculty of Music at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia)

The fall of communism was a series of liberal democracy movements in the late 1980s and early 1990s that led to the collapse of communist governments in the Eastern Bloc, symbolized by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The dismantling of the Iron Curtain has radically altered the global balance of powers, shifted geopolitical reordering, and transfigured the European sense of agency and belonging. Other such events to follow the collapse of the Soviet Union and European Communism were the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, leading to the disintegration of the political state, and more recent chains of conflicts challenging collective identities stretching back to the Second World War. Such reordering across the continent has led individuals and communities to reconsider their relations to each other and to their histories in ways that are quickly generating new perspectives on the past and the present, and on how expressions of culture can both nurture and contest relations with others and the broader world.

The three-day conference examines the impact of the fall of communism—the geopolitical reorderings and the redefined senses of identities, borders, and belonging—in music and the arts. This conference aims to capture this moment of reimagining as it reshapes the study and making of music and art by creating a forum for humanistic and artistic inquiry.

We welcome a wide range of topics and discourses in the fields of music, arts, architecture, and closely related humanities. We especially welcome themes about:

•⁠  ⁠music, art, and nationalism

•⁠  ⁠⁠music, art, and national identity

•⁠  ⁠⁠postcolonialism in Eastern and Central European culture

•⁠  ⁠⁠decolonization of Eastern and Central European music and art

•⁠  ⁠⁠the impact of the disintegration of Yugoslavia on music and the arts

•⁠  ⁠legacy of conflict in the artistic sphere

•⁠  ⁠⁠post-communist challenges and their impact on the cultural sphere

Formats: individual papers (20 minutes); themed sessions (3–4 papers, 20 minutes each); lecture-recitals (30–60 minutes).

The official conference language is English.

Please send abstracts (250–300 words) to Laura Emmery (laura.emmery@gmail.com) by January 15, 2026. In your submission, please include your name, any institutional affiliation, and any audiovisual requirements. For themed sessions, please submit all abstracts together with an additional proposal describing your session theme (100 words). The conference committee will review all submissions and inform the participants by 15 February 2026.

Conference fee: €80 for affiliated scholars, €50 for independent researchers, €40 for students. The conference fee includes free entry to all concerts organized during the conference.

Programming Committee:

Laura Emmery, Chair (Emory University, USA); Miloš Bralović (Institute of Musicology at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia); Žarko Cvejić (The Faculty of Media and Communications, Serbia); Anna Dalos (Institute for Musicology in Budapest, Hungary); Dalibor Davidović (Music Academy at the University of Zagreb, Croatia); Marija Dumnić Vilotijević (Institute of Musicology at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia); Pauline Fairclough (University of Bristol, UK); Kevin Karnes (Emory University, USA); Jānis Kudiņš (Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, Latvia); Ivana Medić (Institute of Musicology at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia); Ivana Miladinović Prica (Faculty of Music at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia); Marija Pavlović (Cultural Center Parobrod / University “Union-Nikola Tesla,” Serbia); Christoph Schuller (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Germany); Ruta Stanevičiūtė (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Lithuania).