Symposium: May 17-18, 2019
Exploring Gender Dynamics in the Music Industry
Call for Papers (Extended deadline March 25th)
May 17-18, 2019
University of Groningen
Groningen, The Netherlands
The Department of Arts, Culture and Media in connection with the research project Exploring Gender Barriers in the (Dutch) Music Industry funded by the NWO KIEM (Creative Industry – Knowledge Innovation Mapping) at the University of Groningen is pleased to announce a two-day symposium to be held on May 17-18, 2019. The symposium will bring together both scholars and industry professionals to share insights on the topic of Gender Dynamics in the Music Industry. The intention is to share resources and create a dialogue to better address the lack of gender parity within the music industry. Further, we seek to extend to discussion to fields connected to, but not exclusive to the (relatively better researched) performance sphere. We welcome scholars and industry professionals from all genders and from all genres of music from classical to folk and popular.
During this two-day seminar, we welcome two keynote speakers, Dr. Marion Leonard (University of Liverpool, UK) and Dr. Ann Werner (Södertörn University, Sweden) with experience researching and publishing on this important topic as well as an evening performance at the local podium Oost. Finally, during this symposium, we will provide an interactive booklet on resources for music industry professionals and scholars providing techniques working pro-actively to improve the gendered dynamics within this field. During a workshop, we will request information about your own music industries to add to this interactive platform.
Proposals are invited especially on these five topics but other topics are welcome:
1. Gender quotas in music festivals and music podiums/stages: we welcome talks which examine the role of quotas in music festival programing to research about the existing quotas in music performance platforms broadly conceived.
2. Gendered dynamics behind the scenes: this theme relates especially to those fields outside of performance (yet related) and can include any of the myriad roles performed by music industry professionals from booking agents to administrative assistants and from media platforms to producers and talent scouts.
3. Discourses on gender in music industry platforms: we understand discourses broadly as also widely applied and as encompassing various formats from journalistic writing to the ‘texts’ circulated through performance based media such as music videos and documentaries and to the informal discussions and ‘value judgements’ in the hallways and coffee corners of music industry institutions.
4. Policy approaches towards gender dynamics in the music industry: With this theme, we welcome topics which examine existing policy approaches towards achieving more gender parity within the music industry such as those recently examined in Sweden (“Tackling gender inequalities in music: a comparative study of policy responses in the UK and Sweden” 2017). We also welcome ideas related to possible new cultural policies aimed at various levels from municipal to regional and national and within various spheres of the music industry from broadcasting and performance to hiring policies of music industry institutions.
5. Gendered facets of music education/training: Studies such as those carried out by Born (Music Technology, Gender, and Class: Digitization, Educational and Social Change in Britain 2015) on music and technology have provided important thick descriptions of the dynamics guiding music education programs especially in light of recent changes within education such as the rise of neoliberalism and the propensity to support new technologies within the classroom. Here we welcome presentations which query the role of education for facilitating or inscribing particular gendered patterns.
Paper presentations will be twenty minutes in length with ten minutes for questions.
For our conference, we welcome two speakers: Marion Leonard (University of Liverpool) from the United Kingdom and Ann Werner (Södertörn University) from Sweden.
Marion Leonard is senior lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Liverpool where she is also a member of the Institute of Popular Music. She is author of Gender in the Music Industry (Ashgate) which drew on in-depth interviews with women rock musicians to explore how they negotiated gendered cultures within their working lives. Her recent work in this area has looked beyond musicians to consider how gender structures the experiences of women working in other areas of employment in the music industries. She has published numerous articles and chapters in the field of popular music studies and is co-editor of The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (Liverpool University Press) and Sites of Popular Music Heritage (Routledge).
Ann Werner’s PhD in the field of cultural studies examined teenage girls’ uses of popular music while attending the institutions Linköping University in Sweden and Western Sydney University in Australia. From 2009, she took various posts in music, media and gender studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm University, Auckland University, and Linnaeus University respectively. Her research interests include projects on first people’s music online, dancing within YouTube, and draws from concepts from education, music and gender studies. She has also researched music related media such as music streaming as well as the relationship between music, gender, feminism and anti-racism more broadly. Her latest publication in the journal Per Musi is titled “What Does Gender have to do with Music Anyway?” (2019 forthcoming). In 2018, she published the book Streaming Music on Routledge, co-written with Sofia Johansson, Patrik Åker and Gregory Goldenzwaig.
DEADLINES
Please send your title, abstract, a short bio (less than 150 words) and affiliation to k.a.mcgee@rug.nl by March 25th, 2019.
Abstracts should be less than 350 words, in English, and with a relevant title. Proposed panels are also welcome and should contain a short panel abstract – less than 300 words and individual presentation abstracts, less than 350 words.