[Commlist] cfp: Power, Platforms and Peripheries: Popular Music in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe

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*Power, Platforms and Peripheries: Popular Music in Central, Eastern and 
Southeastern Europe*
*IASPM CESE 2nd international conference, 1–3 April 2027, Faculty of 
Social Sciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia.*

*Organized by the International Association for the Study of Popular 
Music – Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (IASPM CESE) and by the 
Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Social 
Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.*
The second conference of IASPM CESE (International Association for the 
Study of Popular Music – Central, Eastern, and Southeastern 
Europe) brings together scholars, researchers, and practitioners to 
examine how popular music is made, valued, and circulated in a region 
shaped by structural asymmetries. While CESE is often approached through 
histories of transition, this conference foregrounds the present – and 
the realistic, utopian, and dystopian futures – by focusing on the 
infrastructures, market dynamics, and platform ecologies that condition 
what becomes visible, viable, and exportable.
We start from the premise that “periphery” is not a geographical label 
but a relational position produced through unequal access to capital, 
media systems, touring routes, rights regimes, and the discoverability 
logics of global digital platforms. These asymmetries also raise 
pressing questions of inclusion and exclusion: who is recognised as a 
legitimate music worker or cultural actor; whose labour is rendered 
invisible; and which bodies, voices, and genres are amplified or 
marginalised across scenes, institutions, and industries. We therefore 
welcome contributions that engage feminist, queer, and post-/decolonial 
perspectives on popular music in CESE, including how ethnicity, gender, 
sexuality, class, and migration shape participation, representation, and 
opportunity.
At the same time, history and memory remain crucial for understanding 
these dynamics. Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe is shaped by 
distinct cultural formations, socialist and post-socialist trajectories, 
language ecologies, and media infrastructures that continue to organise 
taste, legitimacy, and routes of circulation. Rather than treating 
“history” and “memory” as a separate register, we approach them as 
active forces sedimented in institutions, genres, repertoires, 
professional networks, and public imaginaries that structure how music 
scenes and industries operate today.
The conference also foregrounds the contemporary political economy of 
popular music – especially the changing configurations of power brought 
by platforms, data, and transnational market integration. We invite 
contributions that are engaging the region’s cultural specificities 
while tracing how sectoral structures (live, recorded, media, policy, 
and intermediaries) shape what becomes sustainable, scalable, and 
exportable. How do CESE music markets negotiate platformisation and 
concentration? What forms of policy, infrastructure, and professional 
practice enable or constrain careers? And what “peripheral futures” 
become imaginable – and workable – across different countries in the region?
*We welcome contributions that cover, among other topics:*

  * *CESE as a “peripheral market”* and what peripherality means in
    practice (unequal visibility, bargaining power, language barriers,
    touring routes, media infrastructures, platform logics).
  * *Comparative music industries across CESE*, including
    country-to-country analyses (structures, revenues, live sector,
    collecting societies, export offices, radio/TV ecosystems, subsidy
    regimes) and shared analytical vocabularies.
  * *From scenes to sectors:* bridges between scholarship and industry
    practice (labels and management, venue ecologies, festivals, export
    strategies, professionalisation, career sustainability).
  * *Platformisation and discoverability (“who gets heard”)* in the
    streaming era (recommendation systems, playlists, platform
    governance, metrics, definitions of “success,” metadata, language,
    marketing, and international reach).
  * *Policy, regulation, and cultural intervention in small markets*
    (quotas, public funding, media regulation, competition policy, state
    support, public service media, and policy successes/failures).
  * *Empirical and data-driven research on CESE popular music*
    (airplay/streaming data, charts, repertoire shares, concentration
    measures, ticketing, audience surveys, network analysis, and
    mixed-method approaches).
  * *Regional flows within CESE* beyond “Westward” narratives
    (intra-regional touring circuits, media exchange, diaspora routes,
    language adjacency, and regional hubs).
  * *Labour, precarity, and the conditions of music work* (rights and
    royalties, gig economies, informal economies, gendered labour, care
    work, burnout, portfolio careers, unionisation/collective organising).
  * *Future-facing genres, infrastructures, and innovation* (electronic
    micro-industries, hybrid folk-pop economies, AI tools, new
    distribution and monetisation models, shifting aesthetics under
    market constraints).
  * *Re-thinking “popular music” from the periphery* (global hits and
    local memory, local repertoires, how “mainstream” is built in small
    markets, and what counts as “local success” vs “global recognition”).
  * *Feminist, queer, and post-/decolonial approaches to CESE popular
    music*, including questions of representation, canon formation, and
    access to resources; and how race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality,
    class, disability, and migration shape participation and opportunity
    across scenes and industries.
  * *Inclusion/exclusion and “belonging” in music worlds* (gatekeeping,
    safety, institutional discrimination, informal networks,
    professional norms), including intersectional perspectives on who
    gets to perform, produce, curate, fund, or be heard.
  * *History, memory, and cultural specificity as active infrastructures
    of the present*, including socialist and post-socialist legacies,
    post-Yugoslav and post-imperial trajectories, language ecologies,
    media institutions, and the ways these shape taste, legitimacy, and
    routes of circulation today.

*Submission details:*
We encourage both individual papers and organized panels (3 or 4 
presenters).
Individual abstracts should be *200–300 words*, accompanied by a *brief 
bio* (100 words) and *a list of relevant references* (approx. 5).
Panel proposals should include a collective abstract and individual 
abstracts for all participants with their bios and general list of 
relevant references.

  * *Deadline:* September 15, 2026

o *Acceptance of papers:* November 20, 2026

  * *Format:*

o   Individual presentations: 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion
o   Panels: 90 minutes for three presentations.

  * Please submit your abstracts: *(iaspmcese /at/ gmail.com)*
    <mailto:(iaspmcese /at/ gmail.com)>

Each applicant should be a member of IASPM. Each accepted speaker will 
have an option to join the IASPM CESE branch during the conference (the 
expected fee is between 20 and 30 EUR).
In case of any questions, please contact IASPM CESE through general 
email (*(iaspmcese /at/ gmail.com)* <mailto:(iaspmcese /at/ gmail.com)>).

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