The IMS Study Group Auditory History is thrilled to open the registration and announce the programme of our inaugural conference in Paris on 18–21 March 2026 titled The Historical Ear: What is Auditory History? We invite you to visit our website to explore the programme and register for the event: https://auditoryhistory.musicology.org/conference

Registration is mandatory both for conference presenters and participants (online and in person). For those attending virtually, details regarding online access will be distributed after the registration period closes on 2 March 2026.

This event brings together scholars to discuss the methodologies and theories of auditory history. The conference is co-organized with the University of Chicago John W. Boyer Center in Paris and the Institut de recherche en Musicologie (IReMus). It will be held at the University of Chicago John W. Boyer Center (Days 1–3) and the BnF François-Mitterrand (Day 4).

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Programme:
DAY 1 – 18 March 2026, Wednesday

09:00 – 09:30 Registration (lobby) and welcome coffee (Amphitheatre, 1st floor)
09:30 – 10:00 Opening speeches (Niall Atkinson, Tin Cugelj, Salih Demirtaş)

10:00 – 11:30 SESSION 1: Spatial Rituals and Polyglot Listening | Chair: Niall Atkinson (University of Chicago)

Toward a Polyglot Auditory History: Linguistic Differences, Auditory Terminologies, and Their Role in Early Sino-Western (Mis-)Understandings | Jen-yen Chen (National Taiwan University)

Soundspace: Reframing the Performance of Early Modern Urban Ritual | Tess Knighton (ICREA | Autonomous University of Barcelona) & Antonio Arnieri (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
11:30 – 13:00 SESSION 2: Multisensorial and Embodied Methodologies | Chair: Salih Demirtaş (Orient-Institut Istanbul)
Aestheticizing the World: Aural Disconnection and Aerial Seeing | Anne Leonard (Clark Art Institute)
Walking Into Sound | Giovanni Zanovello (Indiana University)
The Reading Ear: Guided Listening from a Diachronic Perspective | Christian Thorau & Julia Barreiro (University of Potsdam)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch (Great Hall, 4th Floor)

14:00 – 15:30 SESSION 3: Sounding Sacred Space and Architecture | Chair: Alexander J. Fisher (University of British Columbia)
Negotiating Sound and Space: Coexistence and Conflict in Early Modern Religious Ritual (paired paper): Clash of the Clergy: Sound, Space and Subversion in Early Modern Barcelona |Helen Herbert (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Parallel Liturgies: Managing Liturgical Simultaneity in the Dominican Friary of Valencia | Chiara Mazzoletti (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Auditory Experiences and the Making of Catholic Art in Early Modern Italy | Marta Battisti (Catholic University of Louvain)

15:30 – 16:00 Coffee break (In front of the Amphitheatre)

16:00 – 17:30 SESSION 4 (Panel) | Chair: Christian Thorau (University of Potsdam)
Place, Heritage, and Experience in Amplified Auditory History | Steve Waksman, Lawrence Davies, Frances Morgan (University of Huddersfield)

18:00 – 19:00 WORKSHOP | Moderator: Tin Cugelj (University of Nottingham)
Embodied Reflections: A Participatory Workshop in Sound, Positionality, and Lived Experience | Gillian Hurst (University of Bristol)

19:00 – 21:00 Reception (Great Hall, 4th Floor)

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DAY 2 – 19 March 2026, Thursday
09:00 – 10:30 SESSION 5: Auditory Regimes | Chair: Alexandros Maria Hatzikiriakos (University of Sheffield)
*In memory of Jonathan Sterne (1970–2025), whose work continues to shape how we think, hear, and historicise sound.
“The thundering artillerie, the clattering armour, and the glistering weapons”: Sonic Strategies in the Austrian Habsburg–Ottoman Thirteen Years’ War (1593–1606) | Linda Pearse (Mount Allison University)
Beyond the Barricades: Acoustic Regimes and Everyday Parliamentarism in 1848 | Philip Wetzler (University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar)
Auditory Regimes in Crisis: Sonic Statecraft in Athens, July 1920 | Argyrios Kokoris (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break (In front of the Amphitheatre)

11:00 – 13:00 SESSION 6: Auditory Imagination | Chair: Linda Pearse (Mount Allison University)
Sound Studies and the Auditory Imaginary of Musical Sources | Alexander J. Fisher (University of British Columbia)
Embodied Documents of Sonic Heritage: Ambisonics and Auditory Imagination in Irish Institutional Confinement | Declan Tuite (Dublin City University)
Sisters of White Chapel: Intersecting Auditory Imagination and Sung History | Timothy Yu (Florida State University)
An Unquiet Grave: The Sublime Soundscape Joseph Wright of Derby’s (1734 1797) Indian Widow (1785) | Rebecca Owen-Keats (University of Birmingham)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch (Great Hall, 4th Floor)

14:00 – 16:00 SESSION 7: Listening to Identity | Chair: Jen-yen Chen (National Taiwan University)
Dual Listening Positionalities of Kano Tadao: The Sound Narratives in Mountains, Clouds, and the Savages | Yu-Hsuan Liao (Duke University)
Echoes of a Lost Homeland: Refugee Memory and the Sonic Afterlife of Partition in Delhi | Vanshika Pandey (King's College London)
“Med Sang og Skrig” – Listening to the Othered North | Judith I. Haug (University of Oslo)
Aural Flânerie and Listening Practices in a Northern European Urban Hub | Jakob Ingemann Parby (Museum of Copenhagen)

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break (In front of the Amphitheatre)

16:30 – 18:00 SESSION 8: Beyond the Audible | Chair: Judith I. Haug (University of Oslo)
The Sound of Fashion: Hearing Feminine Identities in Early Modern Portraiture | Ana Howie (Cornell University)
"The devil as an earworm”. Towards an Auditory History of Hallucinations in Nineteenth Century Catholic Tyrol | Maria Heidegger (University of Innsbruck)
The Sonic Occult | James G. Mansell (University of Nottingham)

18:00 – 18:15 Networking break

18:15 – 19:45 SESSION 9: Musical Listening | Chair: Tin Cugelj (University of Nottingham)
(Re)Hearing Tradition. Audile Techniques and the Making of Japanese Court Music in the Late 19th Century | Andrea Giolai (Leiden University)
Historicizing Inaudible Agents of the Audible Past: “Coin-men”, “indies” and “fangirls” in Postwar America | José Gálvez (University of Augsburg)
Teaching Music History through the Phonosphere: Written Auditory Experiences in Early Modern Valencia | Ferran Escrivà Llorca (University of Valencia)
20:00 Conference dinner | L’Atelier Saisonnier (55 rue de Tolbiac, 75013 Paris)

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DAY 3 – 20 March 2026, Friday
09:00 – 10:30 SESSION 10: Ritual Acoustics | Chair: Tess Knighton (ICREA | Autonomous University of Barcelona)
A Sonic Modelling of Historic Famagusta and its Bells | Michael Walsh (Nanyang Technological University Singapore)
Catholic Soundscapes of the Greek Archipelago in the 17th Century: Spaces, Practices and Sources | Théodora Psychoyou (Sorbonne University)
Toll: Campanology and the Recasting of German Society after 1945 | Alice Goff (University of Chicago)

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break (In front of the Amphitheatre)

11:00 – 12:30 SESSION 11 (Panel) | Chair: Gillian Hurst (University of Bristol)
Pandemic Sickscapes: Auditory Histories through the Lens of Emotion and Experience
Sick Sounds? Toward an Auditory History of the Spanish Flu Pandemic in Vienna | Emma Schrott (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)
Sickscape and Sonic Dis-ease: Musicking through Emotional Collapse during the Spanish Flu Pandemic in Baku | Aria Torkanbouri (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)
Sickscape as Soundscape of Leaking Dis-ease: Theoretical Considerations from the ERC project GOING VIRAL | Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch (Great Hall, 4th Floor)

13:30 – 15:00 SESSION 12: Corporeality and Sound | Chair: Antonio Arnieri (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Sounding Silence: Queer Listening and Sonic Memory of the AIDS Pandemic | Vaughan Hennen (Texas Tech University)
Cries and Whispers: The Gendered Acoustics of Sexual Consent in Early Modern and Modern Italian Criminal Law | Emilia Musumeci (University of Teramo)
Uncanny Voices: Talking Heads in Auditory History | James Deaville (Carleton University)

15:00 – 15:30 Coffee break (In front of the Amphitheatre)

15:30 – 17:00 SESSION 13: The Politics of Sound | Chair: Tim Shepard (University of Sheffield)
When Power Sang and the People Paid: Courtly Music, Urban Spaces, and the Limits of Power in Renaissance Milan | Lorenzo Tunesi (Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours)
Reform and Reckoning: Sounding the Origins of Ancien Régime Paris | Simon Frisch (Stanford University)
Sonic Entanglements: Listening to Polish Tehran, 1942-1945 | Laudan Nooshin (City St George’s, University of London)

17:00 – 17:30 Networking break

17:30 – 19:30 SESSION 14: Sonic Ecology | Chair: Salih Demirtaş (Orient-Institut Istanbul)
What did a Renaissance Garden Sound Like? | Susan Lewis (Western University, Canada)
A thousand years of listening to sand: Tracing the Auditory Cultures of ‘Singing’ Dunes Through Archival Accounts, Local Knowledges, and Personal Encounters | Lara Weaver (Independent Scholar)
‘Alas, poor bird! Thy lay / And all its sweetness is forgot’: Listening to Nature and Radical Political Ecology in the Chartist Movement in Early Victorian Britain | David Kennerley (University of Oxford)
Historical Performance as Environmentalism | Carlo Diaz (University of Chicago)

DAY 4 – 21 March 2026, Saturday
09:00 – 10:30 SESSION 15: Sounding Sacred Space | Chair: Théodora Psychoyou (Sorbonne University | IReMus)
Copying, Chanting, Carrying On: Dominican Processional Traditions in Aveiro (15th Century) and Prague (21st Century) | Kristin Hoefener (NOVA University Lisbon)
Synagogues as Auditory Environments: Sound and Spatiality in Central European Reform Synagogues | Fani Gargova (Leibniz Institute of European History) and Josep Llorca-Bofí (Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics)
Sacred Sound/Sacred Space – Listening to the Past? Virtual Acoustic-Visual Reconstruction of Sacred Spaces of the Middle Ages | Stefan Morent (University of Tübingen)

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break (in front of Salle 70)

11:00 – 12:30 SESSION 16: Processing the Audible Past | Chair: James Mansell (University of Nottingham)
The Mechanical Recording Workshop: A New Methodology in Early Recording Research | Inja Stanović (University of Surrey)
The Sensory World of Sound Studios: Embodied and Sensory Practices in Digital Sound Archiving | Zhuolin Li (University of Leicester)
Sonic Thinking, Auditory History and Auditory Displays | Brian Sheehan (Munster Technological University)

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch (BnF Cafeteria: Café des globes)

13:30 – 15:30 SESSION 17: Curating Sonic Heritage | Chair: Hasan Baran Fırat (University of Antwerp)
Acoustic Imaginaries: A Framework for Sound Installations and Online Experiences | Mariana J. López (University of York)
House Music: Presenting a “Listening Site Visit” Methodology | Sarah Lappin (Queen’s University Belfast)
Historical Maritime Soundscapes | Amandine Colson (German Maritime Museum | Leibniz Institute of Maritime History)
“Too many Horses!” Curatorial Challenges when Presenting ‘Authentic’ Historical Soundscapes in Museum Exhibitions | Lewis Gibson (Royal Holloway University of London)

15:30 – 15:45 Coffee break (in front of Salle 70)

15:45 – 17:45 SESSION 18: Sound, Knowing, and Sovereignty | Chair: Alexandros Maria Hatzikiriakos (University of Sheffield)
“Che fai tu, Eco, mentr’io ti chiamo?” Mythological Figure, Sonic Spatiality and Political Representation in Early Modernity | Florian Giering (University of Marburg)
Hearing the Military Camp in 15th-Century Burgundian Sources | Deanna Pellerano (Catholic University of Leuven)
Acoustemologies from Below: Listening in Switzerland, 1798–1815 | Cla Mathieu (Paris Lodron University of Salzburg)
Hearing Revolution: Songs, Drums, and Conch Shells in Améthyste's St. Domingue | Linda Sturtz (Macalester College)

17:45 – 18:00 Networking break

18:00 – 20:00 SESSION 19: Another Pair of Ears | Chair: Salih Demirtaş (Orient-Institut Istanbul)
Attuned to the Feminine: Domestic Soundscape and the “Female Ear” in Dutch Seventeenth Century Musical Painting | Jessica Sternbach (Temple University Philadelphia)
The Cultured Ear: Sonic Encounters of Ottoman Envoys in the 18th-Century | Hande Betül Ünal (University of Cambridge)
Historicizing “the Galton Ear”: Auditory Acuity and the Trace of Music in Early Eugenics | Alexander W. Cowan (University of Chicago)
Traces of d/Deaf History: Listening to Henri Gaillard’s 1918 Laboratoire de la Parole Recording | Sarah Fuchs (Royal College of Music)

20:00 – 20:30 Concluding thoughts (Niall Atkinson, Tin Cugelj, Salih Demirtaş)

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The conference is made possible by our main sponsor, the University of Chicago Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), with additional support from the University of Chicago Departments of Art History and Music, and the International Musicological Society (IMS).