The 38th McGill Graduate Music Symposium will be held March 20 – 22, 2026 at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The call for papers is open until 11:59pm on December 21, 2025 (Eastern Time). We welcome abstracts up to 250 words in length (or 275 words in French) from graduate students in any area of music research, performance, and composition from any institution/university. In addition to the abstract, up to two pages of supplementary materials (e.g., bibliography, diagrams, and musical examples) may be included in the submission. Abstracts and presentations may be in either English or French. Paper presentations, posters, lecture-recitals, and other creative forms of presentations are all encouraged. Presentations will be allotted 30-minute time slots, with 20 minutes for the presentation and 10 minutes for questions and discussion. Please complete the following Google Form to apply: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeahPKuespnRAGWImgbJBq7qoitnFEuuUlIJpZebXiWurCevw/viewform. Please remove all personal identifying information from the text of the proposal and from the two pages of supplementary materials.

We are also pleased to announce the keynote speakers for the Symposium. Dr. Robert Komaniecki (Lecturer in Music Theory, University of British Columbia) will deliver the Research Keynote, and Benjamin Hochman (Pianist and conductor, Bard College Berlin) will deliver the Performance Keynote. The keynote topics and abstracts will be available soon.

For more information about the conference, please visit our website: https://mcgillmusicsymposium.wordpress.com/

The Organization of Music Graduate Students at Columbia University is pleased to announce the 2026 Columbia Music Scholarship Conference, held on Friday, April 10, 2026.

We are broadly interested in exploring silences, intentional and imposed, that expand conventional understandings of how both sound and society are organized. The chilling of speech and brute coercion of academic norms toward self-censorship, driven by populist and reactionary thought, have forced us to consider these issues. How is silence produced, aestheticized, enforced, or endured, and what might attention to silences reveal about censorship and political economy, compositional aesthetics, violence, memorialization, and other key questions in music and sound studies?

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
Critical archival methods and the production of memory and history;
Funding apparatuses and institutional silences;
Materialism and materiality, decadence and decay;
War, militarization, displacement, and colonialism;
Class, race, gender, and social differentiation in music and sound;
Media, aesthetics, and the production of affect;
Agency and constraint in speaking, voicing, and listening;
Accessibility in music pedagogy and research;
Care, healing, disability, and prosthesis;
and ritual, tradition, religion, and mourning.

Format
We welcome abstracts no longer than 250 words from scholars, artists, musicians, and other practitioners at any stage in their careers. We are open to lecture recitals (30 minutes) and roundtable discussions (90 minutes) in addition to standard paper presentations (20 minutes).

Submissions
All proposals can be submitted through this Google Form by January 16, 2026. Questions regarding the conference can be emailed to cmscmusic@columbia.edu.

Thank you,
Meghan O’Harra
Columbia University in the City of New York

Call for Presentations:

29th Annual Graduate Students in Music (GSIM) Conference

The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)

The students of the Department of Music at The Graduate Center, CUNY, are pleased to announce the 29th Annual GSIM Conference, held on March 6–7, 2026. The deadline for submission is Monday, January 5th, 11:59 pm EST, 2026.

See the full call here:
https://gsim.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2014/10/10/call-for-papers/

This Winter and Spring quarters, Center on Diversity and Community (CoDaC) will host a 6-training sequence to introduce new graduate students (in years 1-3) to the process and practice of academic writing and publication. Sessions will be held 4-6 pm, Fridays, weeks 3, 5, and 7 of each quarter. The training is led by the university’s Writing Consultant, Dr. Mike Murashige, who will lead newer graduate students through a host of topics like:

• how to create and sustain a regular writing practice
• project conceptualization
• intro to the modes of scholarly writing
• effective approaches to revision
• and from seminar paper to publication

Participation will be capped at 30 graduate students. To apply, contact Dr. Mike Murashige at mmurashi[at]uoregon.edu. Applications will be accepted until 11 pm on Friday, December 12, 2025. Applicants will be notified on the following Friday, December 19.

Calling all student musicians for a Celebration of International Music!

Did you study an instrument growing up? Do you have lived experience in a musical tradition of your culture or region? Does your family have a musical tradition that you would like to share the story of?

The Global Studies Institute welcomes applications from student musicians of any nationality or culture as well as presentations and posterboards of relevant scholarship or storytelling.

The Celebration will take place on November 17, 2025, and is open to all student musicians and music appreciators. This event is intended to celebrate the breadth of different musical traditions that live here on campus, inviting a joyous atmosphere of curiosity, scholarship, and cross-cultural understanding and learning.

You do not have to be a music major or minor to present or perform; we welcome unique and heartfelt contributions.

Interested in having your voice heard? Programming for this event is student led. Email gsi@uoregon.edu to volunteer for the programming committee. Volunteers will review the incoming submissions to determine the final program and help welcome guests on the day of the event.

Join us for this Celebration!

Click here to fill out the Interest Form by October 22.

In the spring of 2025, the University of Notre Dame announced the creation of the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, a university-wide initiative to support outstanding early-career scholars in science, engineering, and the liberal arts who seek to make a difference in the world.

The College of Arts and Letters will appoint and host a cohort of six postdoctoral fellows for the 2026-2028 academic years. Each of the following departments will host one fellow each: Department of Anthropology, Department of Music, Department of Philosophy, Department of Political Science, Department of Theology, and the Institute for Latino Studies.

The Department of Anthropology is excited to be part of the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for this new cohort. We are a dynamic, integrative, four-field department that emphasizes a holistic understanding of human phenomena. The department has three-self identified areas of excellence: Health & Well-being, Movement of Peoples, and Environment & Culture. Within these domains, we are leaders in exploring the connections between cultural contexts, social experiences, and health. We focus on critical issues in the global world, including crises emerging from forced displacement of communities due to conflict and climate change and how humans use culture to buffer against and remain resilient to environmental shifts. We are particularly interested in welcoming a postdoctoral fellow who can contribute to our department’s strengths in these areas of excellence, which complement Notre Dame’s Strategic Framework.

These prestigious fellowships target exceptional early-career scholars interested in advancing their careers in an academic environment that is both committed to disciplinary expertise and vibrant in interdisciplinary exchange. The College will appoint the fellows for a two-year term. They will receive an annual salary of $75,000 and an additional $15,000 to cover expenses related to research endeavors and further training. Hosting units will provide fellows with office space and work together with the director of postdoctoral studies in the College to identify primary faculty mentors for the fellows’ proposed research projects. Co-mentors with appointments at the University can be named at the discretion of the director and hosting units. Every six months, the director and hosting units will review the fellows’ progress in their research and discuss future plans.

Monetary support and faculty mentoring will be coupled with professional development and networking opportunities in and outside of the hosting unit. The Provost’s fellows will be a part of a university-wide cohort of distinguished researchers who participate regularly in lectures, colloquia, and panel discussions designed to advance their research and career aspirations.

Notre Dame has recently launched eight strategic initiatives intended to identify research areas where the University can make a significant impact. These initiatives will support dramatically expanded research efforts in the arts; data, AI, and computing; democracy; ethics; health and well-being; sustainability; poverty; and, global Catholicism. The University also sustains premier research programs in traditional disciplines as well as having more than 30 university-wide interdisciplinary centers and institutes. Candidates for the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship are encouraged to explore these opportunities, as well as the areas of excellence and growth identified by hosting units, and to select a field of study in which they can excel.

Eligibility:

Applicants must have successfully completed (or plan to complete) a doctoral degree between June 2023 and June 2026. Earlier dates may be accepted if maternity or paternity leave, or Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave occurred within the past two years. Scholars of all nationalities may apply. We welcome candidates with or without permanent full-time research or teaching positions. Doctoral candidates and graduates of the University of Notre Dame, as well as current postdoctoral scholars at the University, are not eligible.

Applicants should submit the following via the Interfolio website:

The application deadline is October 31, 2025, at 11:59 pm EST. Decision by March 2, 2026.

For more information about each unit and potential areas of study within them, see the Program’s webpage.

Frequently Asked Questions can be found on the Program’s webpage.

For further questions or concerns about the application process, please email alprovostpostdocs@nd.edu.

Database Management Intern – Putumayo Digital Media & Jacob Edgar of Cumbancha

Want to listen to the music of the world? Discover new artists, genres and songs?
Every week, we add 20–80 new tracks to our internal music database, and we’re looking for someone who loves music and global cultures to help categorize and organize them. If you’re detail-oriented, curious about the world, and want hands-on experience with music library management, this opportunity is for you.

Contact: info@putumayodigital.com.

About the Role

As a Database Management Intern, you will help maintain and expand our FileMaker music database, which is the foundation of our cataloging and research work. Your responsibilities will include:

• Adding and organizing artwork, themes, languages, countries, and regions of origin
• Categorizing songs by tempo, descriptives, genre, and instrumentation
• Researching and tracking music videos for songs in the database and sending weekly summaries of available videos for review
• Ensuring accuracy, consistency, and quality across the database
• Helping build a searchable archive that supports music research and curation

What We’re Looking For

• Interest in database, archive, or music library management
• Ability to identify languages, music genres, instruments, and cultural origins of songs
• Strong attention to detail, accuracy, and consistency
• Reliability and commitment — someone who can be counted on to regularly fulfill responsibilities
• Familiarity with FileMaker or other databases is helpful, but not required
• General knowledge of and enthusiasm for music and cultures of the world
• Self-motivation and good communication skills (work can be done remotely)

Commitment & Compensation

• Flexible: 5–20 hours per week, depending on your schedule
• Can be done for school credit or for a small stipend
• Remote work welcome

About Us

Putumayo has been introducing millions of listeners to exceptional music from around the globe since 1993 through its colorful, culturally rich compilations.
Cumbancha, founded by ethnomusicologist and producer Jacob Edgar, is a globally respected record label and music company dedicated to discovering, producing, and promoting outstanding international artists. Together, we are committed to building bridges between cultures through music.

We are pleased to solicit proposals for the second annual Cascade Song Festival, a weekend devoted to the study and performance of song. The organizers are music theorist Stephen Rodgers (University of Oregon) and musicologist Stephen Rumph (University of Washington), along with sopranos Camille Ortiz (University of Oregon) and Carrie Shaw (University of Washington). The festival will take place at the University of Washington, Seattle, on January 15-18, 2026. Events will include a recital by the internationally acclaimed soprano Louise Toppin (University of Michigan) and pianist John O’Brien, a masterclass by Toppin, and a keynote presentation by music theorist Matt BaileyShea (Eastman School of Music), as well as performances by U of O and UW faculty and students.

We invite submissions on all aspects of song, with a special welcome to literary scholars, composers, and performer-scholars. Submissions on popular song, musical theater, cabaret, and other genres are also welcome. The festival seeks to foster creative interactions between performance and scholarship, and we welcome both traditional papers and lecture demonstrations. All presenters will be allotted 20 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions.

Topics may (but need not) include:

• the interaction of song analysis and performance
• collaborations between performers and scholars of song
• underexplored song repertoires
• the semiotics of song
• novel ways of understanding the relationship between text and music
• interdisciplinary work that combines musicological, literary, and performance-based perspectives
• poetic misreadings
• constructions of gender and social identity in song and song performance

Please send an abstract of your presentation (maximum 350 words), without your name, to cascadesongfestival -at- gmail.com. In the email, include your name, affiliation or location, and a brief sketch of work in song research and/or performance. Abstracts are due July 1, 2025.

For more information: https://cascadesongfestival.org