Conference: “Musical Infrastructures in Times of Globalization. Pasts, Presents, and Futures”, 5. bis 7. November 2026 in Bern Event Notice NEW

Institute of Musicology, University of Bern, Switzerland
Conveners: Jasmin Goll (Institute of Musicology, University of Bern), Destiny Meadows (Music Department, Davidson College, USA)
5. to 7. November 2026

Registration
Registration is free but mandatory, please register via jasmin.goll[at]unibe.ch

This conference explores the intersections of music, infrastructures, and globalization. It enters discussions on the “infrastructural turn” in the humanities that has asked scholars to critically analyze the systems, networks, and materials that organize and create our environmental relations. In music and sound studies, recent work on “audible infrastructures” has considered its methodological use as an analytic, bringing to the forefront labor conditions, supply chains, media extractivism, and waste (Devine/Boudreault-Fournier 2021, Gribenski/Pantalony/Tkaczyk 2026, Jones 2025). While this work has unpacked the globalized networks beneath music production and consumption, new approaches to “musical infrastructure studies” (Pestel/Rempe 2025, Willson 2026) have sought to extend historical chronological scopes and use infrastructural thinking to emphasize relationality, mobility, and dis:connectivity (between and of various musical actors, institutions, genres, etc.) in music histories. By thinking through such relations, musical infrastructure studies may further unlock globalized histories of music and sound.

This conference aims to continue discussions between audible infrastructure studies and musical infrastructure studies, emphasizing the “hyphenation of the material and the cultural” (Amin 2014, Willson 2026). It seeks to explore the demarcations and convergences between both approaches. We understand infrastructures as (non-)human, networked, stable, supporting, material entities/physical constructions/systems that encourage circulation, exchange, and mobility, and relation (Larkin, 2013, van Laak 2020).

Bringing together scholars from historical musicology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, (global) history, cultural studies, and media studies, we explore the intersections of music, infrastructures, and globalization in different geographies and temporalities. In addition to the keynote by Martin Rempe and the presentations, the conference includes crosstalk and a reading session.

Location
Uni Mittelstrasse
Mittelstrasse 43
3012 Bern
Room 120

How to get to the location from the railway station
Bus stop “Bierhübeli” (bus no. 11 “Neufeld” or 21 “Bremgarten”) or “Mittelstrasse” (bus no. 20 direction “Länggasse”) / 15 min on foot from the station.