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Call for participation: Misogyny in Music Study Day

Location: University of Southampton, Highfield Campus

November 22 2024 

In January 2024, the House of Commons released the Misogyny in Music Report, which contains a series of recommendations for the music industry and for Higher Education. 

Following a successful roundtable discussion about the Report at the University of Southampton on May 16 2024, we will be hosting our annual music education policy ‘study day.’ This will explore the strategies, challenges and pathways for embedding the recommendations of the Misogyny in Music Report into UK Higher Education institutions.  

We welcome expression of interest for: provocations or pedagogical reflections (c.7 minutes each) or themed roundtables (c.30 minutes each) on the report, and how its recommendations can be implemented into musical institutions. 

We particularly welcome explorations or recommendations about how the Misogyny in Music Report can be taken up under the new Labour government, and how we can make these discussions relevant to undergraduate and postgraduate music students. 

With its close links to Public Policy Southampton, the Centre for Music Education and Social Justice is invested in linking educational practice to current policy reports, and providing a forum for reflecting on current policy challenges and issues. Representatives from Public Policy Southampton will attend the event and provide reflections on fostering policy-driven dialogues. 

All proposals, either for provocations, roundtables or pedagogical reflections, must be c.100 words (if a themed roundtable, then 100 words per contributor on the roundtable) and emailed to Erin Johnson-Williams at e.johnson-williams@soton.ac.uk no later than 5pm on 1 November 2024. 

Relevant dates

• Friday November 1 – deadline for expressions of interest 

• Tuesday November 5 – decisions communicated re call and Erin to draw up schedule for the day 

• Thursday November 7 – full programme and Eventbrite registration link sent out  

• Friday November 22 – study day - 10:00 to 18:00, University of Southampton, Highfield Campus 

This will be an in-person event to facilitate break-out groups and opportunities throughout the day to work together. Attendees who would like to travel to Southampton and do not have either a permanent academic job or research travel funds available from their institutions may write to Erin Johnson-Williams at e.johnson-williams@soton.ac.uk to apply for up to £50 to cover travel costs.

Mini-Hartley - Gavin Williams -  ‘Arts of Extraction: Oil, Digital Audio and Geo-Histories of Sound’

Location: Building 06 / 1081, Highfield Campus, or join us on Teams.

Wednesday November 22, 16:00 to 17:30

Ethnomusicologists have long called attention to extractive dynamics in musical cultures. But what of sound as a technology of extraction in the oil industry? 

This colloquium will explore the convergence, since the Second World War, between seismic survey and oil industries in which dynamite and air gun explosions have become standard ways of sounding the earth’s strata. It will peer into the history of mathematics, computing, and spectrographic analysis, it will consider the effects of underwater blasts on marine life, and it will track the implications for early digital audio. 

In particular it will focus on efforts to clean up shellac discs using digital techniques borrowed from the analysis of seismic recordings in search of oil. Ultimately, my goal will be to evaluate the extent to which sonic practices of oil extraction have bled into auditory and musical cultures more broadly, and vice versa, as well as the extent to which both oil and music register capitalism’s framing of the earth in extractible terms.

Mini-roundtable of Univeristy of Southampton respondents

Erin Johnson-Williams

Max Syedtollan 

Nyle Bevan-Clark

Tom Irvine 

About the speaker

Gavin Williams is a Lecturer in Music at King’s College London, having previously worked in UC Berkeley and Cardiff University. His book Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc was published by University of Chicago Press in June, and, together with co-editors Laudan Nooshin and Annette Davison, is currently putting together an edited collection called Critical Perspectives on Petrosonics.