The Archival Turn in Music Sociology

The history of music sociology and established music historiographies are frequently marked by androcentric narratives and reconstructions of the past. In the course of the 60th anniversary of the Department of Music Sociology in 2025, we propose with this conference the archival turn in music sociology in order to acknowledge the contributions of female, feminist, queer and post-/decolonial scholars, musicians, activists, and archivists to the history of music sociology and to critically engage with the historiographies of music’s past.

Physical and digital archives play an important role in these processes. They are sites and practices of knowledge formation, cultural production, and activism and provide means to engage with the past to understand the construction of temporalities, histories, and heritage and to question the canon. Against this background, this conference addresses the following key areas:

- Archives, Ethics, Care
- Lived Experiences and Feminist Archives
- Female Music Histories
- Queering the Archive
- Grassroots Archiving
- Decolonial Approaches
- Materialities and Cultural Labour
- Methodologies
- Digitalisation and Platforms