[Commlist] Conference CfP: The archival turn in music sociology

*Conference Call for Papers
**The archival turn in music sociology
**5–6 February 2026
**mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
*www.mdw.ac.at/ims/events/the-archival-turn-in-music-sociology 
<http://www.mdw.ac.at/ims/events/the-archival-turn-in-music-sociology>

The Department of Music Sociology at the mdw – University of Music and 
Performing Arts Vienna houses two comprehensive archival collections of 
the first generation of music sociologists in Austria: the Kurt Blaukopf 
Archive and the Elena Ostleitner Archive. Kurt Blaukopf (1914–1999) 
initiated the founding of the department in 1965; Elena Ostleitner 
(1947–2021) became an internationally recognised scholar in the late 
1970s for her research on women in music and worked at the department 
from 1975 until her retirement in 2010. These archives are accompanied 
by the private library of Irmgard Bontinck (1941–2021) that also found 
its home at the department after her death. Irmgard Bontinck had served 
as the Head of the Department of Music Sociology, following Kurt 
Blaukopf, and introduced the term ‘Viennese School of Music Sociology’ 
in 1996 to describe its interdisciplinary and empirically oriented 
research programme that was gradually developed in the late 1960s and 
the following decades in Vienna. Scientific narratives about the 
founders of music sociology, however, associate the Viennese School of 
Music Sociology exclusively with Kurt Blaukopf’s work and, as a result, 
reproduce the androcentric reconstructions of the history of sociology 
in general that are characterised by a neglect of women’s contributions 
to the discipline (e.g. Gerhard 2013; Lengermann & Niebrugge-Brantley 1998).


In the course of the 60th anniversary of the Department of Music 
Sociology in 2025, we propose with this conference “The Archival Turn in 
Music Sociology” in order to acknowledge the contributions of female, 
feminist, queer and post-/decolonial scholars, musicians, activists, and 
archivists to the history of music sociology and to critically engage 
with the historiographies of music’s past. Physical and digital archives 
play an important role in these processes. They are sites and practices 
of knowledge formation, cultural production, and activism and provide 
means to engage with the past to understand the construction of 
temporalities, histories, and heritage and to question the canon. The 
archival turn in music sociology thus proceeds from Michel de Certeau’s 
(1988: 75) idea that ‘the transformation of archival activity is the 
point of departure and the condition for a new history’ that has gained 
currency in a range of disciplines and reflects the desire to take 
control of the present in neoliberal capitalism through a reorientation 
to the past. The archival turn in music sociology reflects the move 
towards an understanding of the ‘archive-as-subject’ (Stoler 2009) and 
shares elements with what Steve Waksman (2018) has coined the 
‘historical turn’ in popular music studies and Kate Eichhorn (2013) as 
the ‘archival turn in feminism’ in the twenty-first century.


We invite individual paper presentations from researchers at different 
stages, activists, archivists, and other cultural workers whose research 
and/or practices address the broader evolving dynamics of archives and 
music. The contribution format should be max. 20 minutes (plus 10 
minutes of Q&A).

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

  * Which opportunities arise for the history of music sociology and for
    current music sociological scholarship with the discovery and
    exchange of fragmented and vernacular music-related materials in
    archives?
  * How do personal, private, or grassroots community-based archival
    collections challenge established historical accounts of both music
    and music sociology in relation to feminist-queer and (post-)migrant
    histories and experiences?
  * How have digitalisation and networked technologies transformed the
    creation, circulation, and interpretation of and access to archives?
  * How do platform bias, online censorship, and other digital-era
    constraints affect the preservation and dissemination of music and
    sound archives?
  * What new methodologies, ethics, or politics emerge when music
    research engages with grassroots and community-based archives?
  * How can music archiving (in a broader sense) act as a method for
    examining cultural memory, identity, and social inequalities?

*Abstract submission***

Abstracts (max. 300 words in English), along with a short bio (ca. 50 
words in English, including name and institutional affiliation), should 
be submitted until *28 September 2025* to: (musiksoziologie /at/ mdw.ac.at) 
<mailto:(musiksoziologie /at/ mdw.ac.at)>
Notifications of acceptance: mid-October 2025

*No conference fee***

Conference participation is free of charge.

*Questions?***

Please write to: (musiksoziologie /at/ mdw.ac.at) 
<mailto:(musiksoziologie /at/ mdw.ac.at)>

*Organisers***

Tianyu Jiang, Rainer Prokop, Rosa Reitsamer, Lis Vovka
www.musiksoziologie.at <http://www.musiksoziologie.at>

*References
*de Certeau, Michel (1988), /The Writing of History/, New York: Columbia 
University Press.
Eichhorn, Kate (2013), /The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in 
Order/, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Gerhard, Ute (2013), ‘Feministische Perspektiven in der Soziologie’, 
/L’homme. Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft/, 24 (1): 
73-91.
Lengermann, Patricia Madoo & Jill Niebrugge-Brantley (1998), /The Women 
Founders: Sociology and Social Theory, 1830-1930,/Boston/London: 
McGraw-Hill.
Stoler, Ann Laura (2009), /Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties 
and Colonial Common Sense/, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Waksman, Steve (2018), ‘Reconstructing the Past: Popular Music and 
Historiography’, in Sarah Baker, Catherine Strong, Lauren Istvandity and 
Zelmarie Cantillon (eds), /The Routledge Companion to Popular Music 
History and Heritage/, 55-66, New York: Routledge.


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