ICTMD2027: 49th ICTMD World Conference Universidad Alberto Hurtado Santiago, Chile, January 14-20, 2027

Conference website	https://ictmd.org/ictmd2027
Submission link	https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ictmd2027

You are cordially invited to attend the 49th ICTMD World Conference, which will be held on 14-20 January 2027 at Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile.

Submission Guidelines

Submitted abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, and written in English. Submissions can be made in any one of the six following formats:

1. Single papers are 20 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes of discussion.
2. Single paper/performances are 20 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes of discussion.
3. Film/video presentations are 30-minute long sessions where a filmmaker introduces their recently completed film, and discusses it with the audience participants. As well, the film will be screened during the Film Festival that takes place during the conference.
4. Workshops are 60 or 90 minutes long, where a facilitator(s) lead a session that involves participatory music-making or dance, or other creative, critical activity, as well as discussion and dialogue. 
5. Organized panels are group sessions lasting either 90 or 120 minutes, and they can include either: (a) Three thematically interrelated papers; (b) Four thematically interrelated papers; or (c) Three thematically interrelated papers and a discussant.Roundtables provide opportunities for presenters to discuss a subject with each other and with members of the audience.
6. Roundtables can be 60, 90, or 120 minutes long, and should include at least four but no more than five presenters.

A person may submit, and/or be named on, one submission only. The exception may be that a person may also be named as a Chair (not serve as discussant) in addition to being named as a presenter.

Detailed submission instructions can be found on the submission page.

Themes/Topics

1) Latin America and the Caribbean in the Region and Beyond

Latin America and the Caribbean encompass diverse musical and dance traditions shaped by complex histories of colonization, resistance, migration, and cultural exchange. From Afro-Caribbean music and Indigenous ritual dances to mestizo genres, contemporary urban forms, and diasporic reimaginings, music and dance in this region serve as powerful tools for identity, memory, political expression, and social transformation. This theme invites scholars, artists, and practitioners to explore Latin American and Caribbean music and dance both within the region and in transnational and diasporic contexts, including ones that may often be overlooked, such as Asian music in Latin America and Latin American music in Asia. It encourages reflections on how these expressive forms are practiced, studied, preserved, adapted, and contested across local, national, and global landscapes. How do regional aesthetics and social meanings shift as genres move across borders? What roles do migration, tourism, digital media, and global markets play in shaping these traditions? How are institutions—academic, governmental, religious, or grassroots—engaged in their transmission and transformation?

2) Digital Media

As digital technologies continue to rapidly transform the cultural landscape, music and dance practices across the world are undergoing profound shifts. From AI generated compositions and choreographies to online dance challenges, virtual reality performances, and digital archives of intangible heritage, the integration of digital media into the expressive arts is reshaping how music and dance are created, experienced, transmitted, and theorized. This theme invites critical engagement with the intersections of music, dance, and digital media, foregrounding the implications these technologies hold for ethnomusicology, ethnochoreology, and related disciplines. How do digital platforms affect traditional forms of musical expression as social and artistic practices? How can traditional forms of authority and cultural rights be managed with rapid and widescale digital sharing? What ethical and epistemological questions arise when AI becomes a co-creator or interpreter of music and movement? How are digital tools enabling new forms of embodiment, improvisation, and community? How are digital platforms improving and impacting music distribution, promotion, and consumption? Conversely, how might they contribute to cultural homogenization, surveillance, sustainability concerns, or the commodification of expressive forms? How are the recent processes of political control, platforms concentration and decay affecting existing digital scenes and cultures?

3) Power, Conflict, and Planetary Health

This theme explores how sound and movement respond to and shape the interconnected challenges of political struggle, environmental crisis, and community resilience. From protest songs and national anthems to climate activism, post-disaster recovery, or critiques of sonic weapons and the legislation of bodies, music and dance practices act as powerful tools for expressing resistance, negotiating power, and rebuilding both societies and ecosystems. We invite contributions that examine these modes as sites of contestation, cultural memory, and ecological engagement highlighting how it reflects and influences the complex dynamics between social, cultural, and environmental systems. Topics may include music in conflict and reconciliation, sonic responses to ecological degradation, and the role of performance in (re)organising communities and imagining more just, sustainable futures. This theme also encourages innovative presentation formats and interactive sessions. It approaches music and dance as community, social and cultural practices as sites of contestation, and as sources for (re)imagining, (re)conceptualising, and (re)organising society.

4) Spiritual and Religious Performativities 

The spiritual and the spirit world are often believed to exist independently of religion, society, and belief systems that typically claim authority and generate various orthodoxies. Spirituality as personal belief and religion as institutionalized organization can be either complementary or adversarial (e.g., internal reformation or external evangelization). Notably, performances associated with rituality, spirituality, and religiosity can be distinguished from their performativity in the original Butlerian sense—for example, the non-ecclesiastical Missa Solemnis, subscription concerts of Bharata Natyam, or Papantla's Palo Volador as a UNESCO-designated tradition. This theme opens itself to considerations (and reconsiderations) of gender, colonial complicities and resistances, shifts between restricted, private and public forms, secularization, tourism, cultural conservation, ecologies, and subject positionality—including that of the researcher.

5) Queering the Field

Queer approaches, queer topics, and not least queer researchers have gained momentum in contemporary ethnomusicological discourse. Ethnomusicological gender studies currently focus widely on sexuality, with queer theory forming a central theoretical impulse. Recent publications discuss the position of queerness within our field, including critical reflections on how "queering" has gained academic currency and may also lose its initial disruptive qualities as it becomes an apolitical buzzword in the humanities. Nonetheless—or perhaps especially now—it is vital to provide spaces for critically interrogating music and dance practices through a queer lens, encompassing both normative and queer expressive forms, as well as the positionalities of queer researchers. The theme also invites discussions of Indigenous non-binary genderings and reconceptualizations of local gender constructs informed by global/glocal(ized) LGBTQ+ categories. 

6) Alternate Histories 

The proposed theme seeks to highlight previously unwritten or erased intellectual histories within music and dance studies, especially as Western methodologies and theories continue to dominate global music-dance scholarship. This theme offers scholars the opportunity to present on topics such as alternative research methodologies (including collaborative or applied approaches); increased diversity in researcher positionalities; varied approaches to fieldwork notation; the histories of local, self-taught, or otherwise marginalized scholars and practitioners (e.g., women, queer, Indigenous); overlooked theoretical insights; and histories of knowledge production and dissemination that extend beyond written texts. It builds on recent pedagogical movements toward global music history, historical turns in Latin American ethno/musicology, and the emergence of traditional music studies in Chile as a distinct ethnomusicological subdiscipline.

7) New Research

In addition to the themes above, we welcome papers on new areas of research not addressed within the conference themes.

Programme Committee

Co-Chairs

• Andrea Chamorro (Chile)
• Jessie M. Vallejo (USA)
• Mayco A. Santaella (Malaysia/Argentina)

Committee members

• Nora Bammer (Austria)
• Raquel Campos (UK/Spain)
• Lorenzo Chiarofonte (Italy)
• Georgia Curran (Australia)
• Charlotte D’Evelyn (USA)
• Alla El Kahla (Tunisia)
• Marita Fornaro (Uruguay)
• Andrew Gumataotao (Guam)
• Deonte Harris (USA/Jamaica/UK)
• Laura Jordan (Chile)
• Yuan-Yu Kuan (Taiwan/Hawaiʻi)
• María Gabriela López-Yánez (Ecuador)
• Raquel Paraíso (Mexico/Spain)
• George Pioustin (India)
• Javier P. Silvestrini (Puerto Rico)
• Grace Takyi (Ghana)
• Arwin Tan (Philippines)
• Priscilla Tse (Hong Kong)
• Shuo Niki Yang (China)
• Yukako Yoshida (Japan)
• Katherine Zamora (Colombia)
• Marcia Ostashewski (Canada, ex-officio)

Local Arrangements Committee

Co-Chairs

• Jacob Rekedal, member of ICTMD Chile, professor at Universidad Alberto Hurtado
• Ignacio Soto-Silva, President, ICTMD Chile

Committee members

• Katherine Zamora Caro, Vice President, ICTMD Chile
• Javier Silva-Zurita, member of ICTMD Chile, professor at Universidad de Los Lagos
• Leonardo Díaz-Collao, member of ICTMD Chile, professor at Universidad Católica
• Samuel Araújo, member of ICTMD Executive Board
• Silvia Citro, member of ICTMD Executive Board
• Juan Carlos Poveda, Director, Instituto de Música, Universidad Alberto Hurtado
• Daniela Fugellie, professor at Universidad Alberto Hurtado
• Ariel Reyes, Administrative Coordinator, Instituto de Música, Universidad Alberto Hurtado
• Natalia Bieletto, professor at Universidad Mayor
• Christian Spencer, professor at Universidad Mayor
• Franco Daponte, researcher at Universidad de Tarapacá
• Alberto Díaz, professor at Universidad de Tarapacá
• Lina Barrientos, professor emeritus at Universidad de La Serena
• Rosario Mena, doctoral student at Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Timeline

• First notice: April 2025
• Second notice (themes): July 2025
• First call for proposals: October 2025
• Second call for proposals: November 2025
• Deadline for submission of proposals: 31 December 2025
• Notification of acceptances: 31 March 2026

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to pc2027@ictmd.org.