It is with great please that we are able to announce this year’s program and keynote speaker for the upcoming 9th IASPM Benelux Student Conference, organized with our partners from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (HKU) in Utrecht!

We are happy to invite everyone for our next and upcoming POP TALK 14, in collaboration with Music Matters at University of Groningen with a lecture by Dr Maria Perevedentseva (University of Salford) on: 'Electronic dance music, entertainment and the extended self'

On Friday, June 28th, 2024, we will hold our ninth annual student conference on popular music research organized by IASPM Benelux at HKU in Utrecht. This one-day event will offer a series of panels led and presented by students at all levels of their academic careers. The goal of the event is to provide students with the opportunity to share their research with others, receive feedback, and connect with peers across disciplines with a joint interest in popular music.

On 30 March to 1 April 1984 the conference “Kantlijnen van de Pop” took place at Paradiso in Amsterdam – the founding moment of the Benelux branch of IASPM. While during the 2-day conference leading academics including Boudewijn Büch as chair and the British sociologist Simon Frith took presented their work and discussed popular music studies as an emerging field of research, in the evening The Falls and INXS performed in Paradiso. The conference was followed by a big record and cassette collectors fair. Special thanks to founding member and conference organizer Stan Rijven for reminding us of this important date!

We are happy to invite our members for the 13th edition of IASPM Benelux POP TALKS, this time in collaboration with Music Matters at the University of Groningen. Dr Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta from the University of Birmingham will talk about his new book Together, Somehow available now through Duke University Press on February 20th, 17:00-18:30 CET.

We are excited to announce the next upcoming POP TALK 12 on January 17: in collaboration with AMSTERDANCE we will welcome Shain Shapiro, who will talk about his new book This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better.