27^e année, 30 mars 2026.

Music Research Today – Musical Performance

October 7-9th 2026, Stockholm

This year's conference is hosted by the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, October 7th - 9th. The conference welcomes contributions on any topic related to research in musicology, music pedagogy, artistic research in music, music theory, music therapy, music psychology and music-related research in other disciplines. The conference particularly welcomes contributions related to this year’s theme and encourages participation from doctoral and master's students.

Musical Performance

This year's conference has a special focus on the theme Musical Performance. This theme will thereby lay the groundwork for a coherent series of sessions across the program, together with a diversity of other perspectives on music research. For the last few decades, research in music has been characterized by a shift in perspective towards studies of music’s performative qualities and practices. One aspect of this development is that disciplines such as musicology and music psychology took steps towards a growing field of performance studies. Parallel to this, new perspectives were developed, through ecological psychology and later embodied music cognition, which opened up for further cooperation with newer disciplines such as music pedagogy and artistic research. Which new trends and methods are growing in this expanded field, or in other interdisciplinary contexts, today? From a historical perspective a bit further back in time, the methodological development in ethnomusicology of the early 1960’s is an important antecedent. At the same time, these perspectives can be further expanded to take into account the role that new technologies have played, initially for recording of sound and video, and later also technologies for quantitatively registering and analysing movement and biometric data. What role can these and other technologies play in music research of the future? We are particularly interested in how these approaches can contribute to new relationships―both through critical perspectives and as direct cooperation―between research and higher education. How can research on and via musical expertise, musician health, performance praxis, technologies for music creation, and a deeper research anchoring in music history and music theory contribute to methodological developments in higher music education?

Thematic approaches, within the area of Musical Performance, can for example include the following:

Musical expertise and interaction, gesture research, improvisation, performance praxis and technologies for music creation, such as augmented and intelligent instruments

Music research on and in higher music education, such as:

Methodological development in the education of musicians ○ Practice-based music theory

The higher music education’s history and future,

Music research as an institutional critique.

Phonogram, recording and sound production

Performative perspectives in historical musicology

Historical and sociological perspectives on musical practices and the institutions of musical life

Cross-disciplinary perspectives on musicians’ health

Multimodal methods in music research on performative practices

Inclusion in higher music education and research