CfP: IASPM-SEA 2025 – Peripheries, Margins, and Ambiguities across Borders in SouthEast Asian Popular Music (06.-08.08.2025 , National Taiwan University, Taipei), Deadline: 15.3.2025

CfP: IASPM-SEA 2025: Peripheries, Margins, and Ambiguities across Borders in SouthEast Asian Popular Music
6-8. August 2025, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Deadline: 15.3.2025

The tides of continued globalisation bring forth condensations of time and space, unifying formerly disparate cultures and communities. Whether by movements of people through migration, trade and voyage or by movements of objects and ideas through exchange, media or the internet, a question inevitably arises: how do interacting groups of people create and adapt ideas about culture within new contexts brought about by globalisation? Group interactions and cultural expressions within these contexts continue to operate amidst existing power dynamics while creating and shaping new ways of associating, integrating, and resisting polarisations. As these power relations continue to play out, how does popular music map onto the blurring, configuring and (un)marking of borders and boundaries in Southeast Asia and beyond?

This conference is organised around resonances between Southeast Asian and Taiwanese popular music—SouthEast Asian popular musics. As waves of globalisation continue to crash on the shores of our lives, new centres, peripheries, margins, and hinter/borderlands emerge. These currents shape the reception, production, and circulation of popular musics. They also come with changing novel economic, cultural, and political forces that mould how we receive, interact with, and understand popular music. How do cultural contact zones serve as the locus to hybridised musical forms where global influences, colonial histories, and local traditions converge? In what ways do contemporary and past listening practices reveal the mediated power dynamics between dominant centres, frontiers, and margins? Where and how can we see SouthEast Asian popular musics traverse the hierarchies of centre and peripheries through commodification and rebranding? We invite you to contribute your voices and narratives related to these themes in the hope of finding new ways to address these issues.

Suggested themes for this conference (but not limited to) are the following:

  • Identity and Gender and/or Sexuality in Music and Spaces

  • Local Music Commodification and Globalization

  • Role of Media and Technology

  • The Contact Zone and Cultural Hybridization

  • Redefinition of Centres and Peripheries

  • Representation and Marginalization

  • Music as Accommodation and Resistance

  • Regional Soundscapes: Power and Aurality

  • Glocalised Musicking

  • Other New Research

All proposals are subject to peer review. Individual papers will consist of a 20-minute presentation followed by a 10-minute question and answer portion, while organised panels will be given a total of 90–120 minutes (3–4 papers) and 120–150 minutes (4–5 papers). We also welcome Performance lectures, poster presentations, and video screenings. Proposals should include full name(s), affiliation(s), and contact details for presenter(s), and an abstract of no more than 300 words. For organised panels, please submit an overarching panel abstract and individual abstracts. 

The deadline for submission is Saturday, 15 March, 2025. Please submit your abstract proposal to the link: https://forms.gle/JbHp1zUvXYePg5Ei9


Authors will be notified of their acceptance in April. A preliminary conference program and details on conference registration and accommodations will be released in May. The Local Arrangements Committee will announce the conference fee in due time. 

For further inquiries, please contact iaspm[dot]sea[dot]conference[at]gmail[dot]com.

Programme Committee:
Crisancti Macazo (Centro Escolar University Manila) Programme Chair 
Kurt Baer (Independent) 
Jonathan Chan (Independent) 
Ch’ng Xin Ying (UCSI University) 
DJ Hatfield (National Taiwan University) 
Lara Katrina Mendoza (Ateneo de Manila University) 
Rebekah Moore (Northeastern University) 
Nattapol Wisuttipat (Thammasat University) 
Azmyl Yunor (Sunway University)

For further information, please visit the website of the IASPM SEA branch.