26^e année, 27 décembre 2025.

Liminal Musicking: Dreams, Imagination, Thought

9–10 July 2026, Dublin

Part of the 10th Conference of the Royal Musical Association Music & Philosophy Study Group, Dublin.

What is ‘musical thought’? Can music be considered a form of thinking? How to think in, with or through music?

In times of planetary crises, traditional modes of thinking and being in the world increasingly fall short. Music, by definition engaged with sociality, has the agency to access, highlight and challenge existing socio-political formations, and might therefore imagine alternative ways of being in the world.

Marking the start of a larger, collaborative research project, we hypothesise musicking as a mode of thought in its own right; one that differs from and raises challenges to a normative phonologocentrism of (Western) traditional rationality and its disembodied understanding of thinking. In that respect, we speculate that musicking is a liminal and transient practice that shares certain affinities with (lucid) dreaming and the imaginary.

This themed session aims to foster cross-disciplinary conversation on liminal musicking and its surrounding topics. We invite proposals for short provocations of up to ten minutes in the broadly defined fields of music studies and philosophy, and welcome speculative, theoretical, and practical perspectives from across genres, cultures, histories and traditions on topics including, but not necessarily limited to:

Musical epistemologies: music as thought, musicking as thought-in-action, sonic thinking, more-than-human musical sensibilities, feminist and decolonial perspectives and methodologies

Imaginary musics: imagined, fictional, and surrealist musics, music and mental imagery, music and memory

Music in/and dreams: irrational, illogical, unreal, incoherent, or associative musics, strange and warped temporalities, disorientation, dream logics

Multi-modal reasoning and affect: non-sonic musical sensibilities (touch, smell, taste, etc.), feeling-thinking, d/Deaf perspectives

We invite proposals for short provocations of up to ten minutes.

To propose a paper, please send the following to the session convenor Dr Christine Dysers and Dr Malte Kobel

paper title

abstract (350 words maximum)

short biographical note (100 words maximum)

Deadline: Friday 31st October

The decision regarding the acceptance of proposals will be communicated in December

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ISSN 2269-9910.

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Samedi 27 Décembre, 2025