Performance Studies Network : 7th International Conference

10-13 July 2025, London
Call for Contributions
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2025

The Performance Studies Network will hold its seventh International Conference at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London from 10 to 13 July 2025.

Our School encompasses the disciplines of Music, Drama, and Production Arts, and as such we would like to welcome the broad research and practice community to come together at this conference for discussions, debates, performances, and presentations around ‘performance studies’ broadly defined, covering a wide range of practices, musics, approaches, and methodologies.

We invite proposals for individual papers, research-framed performance presentations, and themed round-table discussions, as well as other types of presentation, on any topic in the field of performance studies.

Alongside the broad range of presentations on offer in this conference, there will be a thematic strand forged from the interdisciplinary and civic-focused ethos of the School, putting practice at the centre of this collaborative event. Underpinning our world-leading reputation for high-level artistic training, this strand will centre around such concepts as Artistic Citizenship, Digital Performance and Production, and Socially Engaged Practice. Proposals on one or more of these concepts are warmly invited.

This PSN conference seeks to bring together researchers into practice and through practice from a wide spectrum of specialisms and backgrounds to consider their work as a tool for critical inquiry, potentially reshaping our collective understanding of the field of performance studies in ways that are ever more inclusive, culturally and contextually nuanced, and reflective of complex global realities.

Spaces:

We will welcome you to the state-of-the-art performance and workshop spaces at the Guildhall School, primarily in our Milton Court building, specifically the Concert Hall and Theatre, and large Rehearsal and Studio Rooms. As such, practice-research offerings will be well provided for.

Composition:

There will be a separate call for compositions, to be workshopped/performed in our Concert Hall or Theatre, for which the instrumentation will be advertised shortly.

Workshops and invited participants: We will curate layers of invited workshop-style offerings and performances with internal specialists and guest participants, though in the spirit of non-hierarchical and collaborative structures, we will avoid ‘keynote lecture’ formats.

Training and cohort-building elements:

We will offer some cohort-building and training elements during the conference, for the benefit of collegiality and the skills enhancement of our community, for instance on the topics of considering EDI priorities and challenges in research and teaching, career development (useful for researchers at all career stages), and successful bid-writing advice.

Call for presentations/research-based performances/round-tables/other formats:

We invite proposals of 250 words for the following formats:

Research-framed performance presentation/lecture-recital (20-30 minutes)

Presentation/conference paper (20 minutes + 10 minutes for questions)

Themed round-table discussions (in your proposal please include the details of all main participants, maximum 4 – proposals can be up to 1,000 words in length) (60-90 minutes)

Poster presentations

Hackathon or World Café sessions (discussion and problem-solving; or facilitated small-group discussion) (30-60 minutes)

Creative practice/compositional ‘think pieces’ – (to quote from Johnson-Williams, ‘presentations which engage with creative practice in broad aesthetic, technological or social contexts, or research interventions that involve sharing creative processes’) (20-30 minutes)

Other format – please specify

Format of proposal:

Name

Affiliation (institutional affiliation or independent researcher)

Title and type of presentation, and abstract as defined above

100-word biography

Disciplinary and topic keywords (up to 5)

Technical requirements (beyond normal AV presentation facilities)

Please submit via the MS Form, which will be open in early January

We look forward to welcoming you to Guildhall School of Music & Drama in July.

Please contact:

For logistical questions: Eliza Robey