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.

As the year comes to a close, we would like to thank you for a great year! 2023 was filled with a multitude of fun and inspiring popular music themed events - including the annual student conference and thesis prize, lectures in the POP Talks series and beyond. To get a full overview of what we have been up to, please have a look at our 2023 newsletter:

We invite (BA and MA) students with a dedication to the study of popular music (incl. jazz, EDM,…) at a university, university college or hogeschool in the Netherlands, Flanders or Luxemburg to apply for our one-year board membership program.