We are happy to announce the upcoming POP TALK 15: We are celebrating the Open Access publication of Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe edited by Mario Dunkel and Melanie Schiller on November 11 (16-17 CET).

We are pleased to invite you to attend the ERASMUS+ (Music4Change) funded International School Sustainable Cities and Cultures of Music from November 5-8, 2024 at the University of Groningen.

IASPM Benelux is organizing a symposium at Radboud University: "From Hinterland to Europapa: Identity and Placemaking in Dutch Popular Music Culture on October 25th (in collaboration with The Research School for Media Studies and The Radboud Institute for Culture & History (RICH).  

It is with great please that we are able to announce this year’s program and keynote speaker for the upcoming 9th IASPM Benelux Student Conference, organized with our partners from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (HKU) in Utrecht!

We are happy to invite everyone for our next and upcoming POP TALK 14, in collaboration with Music Matters at University of Groningen with a lecture by Dr Maria Perevedentseva (University of Salford) on: 'Electronic dance music, entertainment and the extended self'

On Friday, June 28th, 2024, we will hold our ninth annual student conference on popular music research organized by IASPM Benelux at HKU in Utrecht. This one-day event will offer a series of panels led and presented by students at all levels of their academic careers. The goal of the event is to provide students with the opportunity to share their research with others, receive feedback, and connect with peers across disciplines with a joint interest in popular music.

On 30 March to 1 April 1984 the conference “Kantlijnen van de Pop” took place at Paradiso in Amsterdam – the founding moment of the Benelux branch of IASPM. While during the 2-day conference leading academics including Boudewijn Büch as chair and the British sociologist Simon Frith took presented their work and discussed popular music studies as an emerging field of research, in the evening The Falls and INXS performed in Paradiso. The conference was followed by a big record and cassette collectors fair. Special thanks to founding member and conference organizer Stan Rijven for reminding us of this important date!

We are happy to invite our members for the 13th edition of IASPM Benelux POP TALKS, this time in collaboration with Music Matters at the University of Groningen. Dr Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta from the University of Birmingham will talk about his new book Together, Somehow available now through Duke University Press on February 20th, 17:00-18:30 CET.

We are excited to announce the next upcoming POP TALK 12 on January 17: in collaboration with AMSTERDANCE we will welcome Shain Shapiro, who will talk about his new book This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better.

As the year comes to a close, we would like to thank you for a great year! 2023 was filled with a multitude of fun and inspiring popular music themed events - including the annual student conference and thesis prize, lectures in the POP Talks series and beyond. To get a full overview of what we have been up to, please have a look at our 2023 newsletter:

We invite (BA and MA) students with a dedication to the study of popular music (incl. jazz, EDM,…) at a university, university college or hogeschool in the Netherlands, Flanders or Luxemburg to apply for our one-year board membership program.

IASPM Benelux invites student applicants to apply for the Bachelors and Masters Popular Music Thesis Prize. This prize honors outstanding research by students (previously enrolled in a university/university of applies science in the Benelux region) writing about popular music.

IASPM Benelux is excited to announce another collaboration with Your Next Stage in organizing the next Music and Event Industry Conference and Career Orientation in Amsterdam. Get your tickets soon, it’s promising to be another sold-out event..

IASPM Benelux is excited to invite you to our next POP TALK: Book launch of Jazz in Contemporary China: Shifting Sounds, Rising Scenes, in collaboration with the ASCA Transasia cultural studies group on September 21st.

What roles do memes, mash-ups, and other forms of (digital) popular culture play in a democratic society? This event invites Dr Lyndon Way from the University of Liverpool to share his expertise in critically examining relations between popular culture, music, society, and politics.

In collaboration with Hogeschool InHolland, CLICKNL, de Popcoalitie, International Music Industry Lab and Being a Designer we are thrilled to invite interested participants to a Matchmaking event between music industry and researchers on June 6 in Amsterdam. The event will be in Dutch.

On Friday 16th of June 2023, we will hold our eighth annual student conference on popular music research organized by the IASPM Benelux at Codarts in Rotterdam. This one-day event will offer a series of panels led and presented by students at all levels of their academic careers. At the end of the day, we will also announce the winners of the Popular Music Thesis Prize 2023, a contest hosted every year by the IASPM Benelux.

After finishing her one-year term, we thank Nora Leidinger for her outstanding work as the first Student Member on the IASPM Benelux board, and we are happy to welcome our new Student Board member: Antonia Wechner!

We are happy to announce the next POP TALKS with Mark J. Butler (Humboldt University, Berlin), in collabration with AMSTERDANCE.

Date: 9. February, 2023

Place: Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16-18, 1012 CP Amsterdam, Room 3.01 and

Online: Register HERE for getting the Zoom link.

IASPM Benelux invites student applicants to apply for the Bachelors and Masters Popular Music Thesis Prize. This prize honors outstanding research by students (previously enrolled in a university/university of applies science in the Benelux region) writing about popular music.