Conference Call for Papers
THE ARCHIVAL TURN IN MUSIC SOCIOLOGY
5–6 February 2026
mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Fanny Hensel-Hall
Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1
1030 Vienna
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@mdw.ac.at
Notifications of acceptance: mid-October 2025
No conference fee
Conference participation is free of charge.
Questions?
Please write to: musiksoziologie@mdw.ac.at
Organisers
Tianyu Jiang, Rainer Prokop, Rosa Reitsamer, Lis Vovka
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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Conference THE ARCHIVAL TURN IN MUSIC SOCIOLOGY
