On Friday, the 20th of June 2025, we will hold the tenth annual IASPM Benelux Student Conference on popular music research in Nijmegen. 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. At the end of the day, we will also announce the winners of the Popular Music Thesis Prize 2024, a contest hosted every year by IASPM Benelux.
Thanks to our collaboration with NICA, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis, Netherlands-based ReMA students and PhD candidates can obtain 2 ECTS by attending the full day of the conference and presenting their research (plus Q&A discussion). More about this under ‘Abstract Submission’.
Sponsors NICA and Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH)
Call for Papers
We invite students of all levels – BA, MA, PhD – based in the Benelux region to participate in the conference. Each year, we highlight the role that music performs in contemporary societies, in all its diversity and breadth. We encourage presentations covering a broad range of subjects, from the changing aesthetics of musical creativity and composition due to new media technologies, to the effects of streaming platforms on the economic sustainability of musicians and independent music labels, or the connection between music, politics, and social justice movements. We intentionally encourage a diverse range of approaches as one of the primary goals of this conference is to foster connections between research topics across genre categories and disciplines. We also encourage and welcome different perspectives and methodologies – from sociological, musicological, and ethnomusicological approaches to music industry and practice-based studies. Finally, we welcome students who are particularly motivated to blur boundaries between established methodologies in their research. In this sense, we hope to strengthen the contributions that explore new ways of examining music scholarship in the Benelux academic world.
Ultimately, we hope to share insights with each other to promote greater contact between our various specializations and to make visible the important role that all forms of popular music research perform for culture and society.
This conference is an excellent opportunity for students to present their research on music to a broader audience and receive feedback from experts in their fields. Bringing together the communities of IASPM Benelux and NICA, the conference also enables students to network across disciplines and professions, getting in contact with other students, researchers as well as musicians from across the Benelux region.
Abstract Submission
If you are interested in participating in this conference, please submit an abstract of 250 words or less on your music related topic before Friday the 16th of May, 2025 at 18:00.
If you wish to receive 2 ECTS for participating, it is important to note that all ReMA and PhD students from Dutch partner universities are able to do so, as long as they are registered at one of the research schools in The Netherlands. If you intend to obtain credits, please mention this in your application.
Your application must include the following information:
Your full name;
education level;
study program/department;
name of academic institution;
email address;
the title of your research and the abstract (short summary)
Presentations will be around 15-20 minutes, followed by a short discussion. In order to accommodate members of all backgrounds, the preferred language of presentations is English, but Dutch-language presentations are also welcome. Please send your abstracts to farijn.janssen@ru.nl. Acceptances will be sent by Friday, May 23rd, 2025.
There is no cost to participate or attend, though speakers must be members of IASPM Benelux (which involves a €10 annual fee for students, for more information visit https://www.iaspmbenelux.org/becomeamember).
We are happy to assist participants who do not own a student ticket with their travel expenses if needed - if that applies to you, please mention it in your application.