The 14th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus21)

Abstract

The 14th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus21) was held in a hybrid format that allowed both in-person and online participants to join. The SysMus conference series aims to foster a dynamic and interdisciplinary environment for students and early career researchers to share and discuss their work in the fields of systematic musicology and its related disciplines. This year at SysMus21, a total number of 26 oral and 35 poster presentations were held, covering a range of topics including well-being, data science, absorption and imagery, social connections, rhythm and groove, music information retrieval, sociology, cognition, and emotion. An introductory talk was given by Peter Vuust (Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University, Denmark), and two keynotes were presented by Jonna Vuoskoski (RITMO Center, University of Oslo, Norway) and Nori Jacoby (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany). Additionally, four workshops were held by Caitlyn Trevor, Joshua Bamford, Niels Christian Hansen, and Svenja Reiner, focusing on research skills relevant for developing a career in academia. In this report, an overview of the conference is provided including a summary of keynotes, presentations, workshops, and social activities, as well as a review of the advantages and challenges of the hybrid set-up.

The 15th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus22)

“…SysMus conferences, including SysMus19 (on-site, Kirk & Bresler, 2020), SysMus20 (online, Peck, 2020), SysMus21 (hybrid, Kiss, Guiot, Hashim, D’Aleman Arango, & Miguel, 2022), and SysMus22 (hybrid), increased in popularity as the number of presenters increased over the years (Figure 3), excluding SysMus20, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. SysMus19 had the greatest number of oral presentations (oral = 34; poster = 13) of the 4 years, whereas SysMus22 had the greatest number of poster presentations, as well as the greatest total number of presentations (oral = 23; poster = 41).…”

“…For instance, there could have been extra spaces on Mozilla Hubs or another online platform for social mingling between all participants. One possibility could be the display of tables in a virtual foyer, where the on-site and online participants could have allocated time to socialize with each other, as experienced during the previous SysMus hybrid conference (Kiss et al, 2022). Moreover, there were some limitations of Mozilla Hubs, where it was not obvious for the participants that they could turn on their camera, since participants seemed to prefer seeing people’s faces instead of only their avatars.…”