TaPRA 2026: Sound, Voice, and Music

Deadline: Monday 9 March 2026

2026 Theme— Senses, Sensory, Sensation
In 2025, our working group conversations focused on the theme of interfaces, exploring the potential of sound, voice and music in cultural and social interaction, dramaturgies of migration, methodologies of embodiment, autoethnographic and documentary practices. This year we situate our inquiry within the discourse of the sensory, shifting the last year’s emphasis towards reception, perception, and the conditions under which sensorial experience is constituted. We seek to investigate the modalities through which sound, voice and music are apprehended, processed, and embodied by performers and audiences; how human perceptual faculties are engaged and accessed across diverse creative industries; and how sensory approaches and experiential modes of SVM intersect with developments in multi- and trans-disciplinary enquiry: for example, within health and wellbeing or climate and ecology research, as well as virtual reality and the development of emerging technologies. We are particularly interested in the following areas of inquiry:

1. What sensory modalities are involved in the production and reception of sound, voice and music? In what ways may the sensory experience of SVM complicate or challenge the divisions between the five canonical senses?
Acknowledging global sensorial diversity—that there are marked differences and nuances in conceptual and experiential understanding of the senses across cultural, geographic, and disciplinary contexts (Howes, 2022)— and following Constance Classen’s understanding of sensory experience as culturally constituted (2023), we recognise that perceptual processes unfold within social and material ecologies that shape how bodies encounter one another and the world. We invite reflection on the division and schematisation of the senses as discrete domains, as well as on multisensory and synaesthetic experiences of sensory phenomena and we encourage contributions engaging with embodiment as a ‘first affordance’ (Spatz, 2017) within SVM research.

2. In what ways do experiences of sound voice and music (in performance, creative practice, training, rehearsal) enable relations to others and/or novel social formations?
By approaching the sensory as an inherently relational phenomenon—one that mediates proximity, connection, and co-presence— we invite propositions on how sound, voice and music facilitate interaction, coordination, and communal attunement. We welcome perspectives that position the sensory not merely as an object of analysis, but as a dynamic field through which social connections are forged, negotiated, and transformed.

3. What are the epistemological affordances and processes which of SVM practices? In what ways can SVM enable the generation of knowledge, not only as tools for communicating research but also as embodied actions that can elicit new understandings?
Dance scholar Elizabeth Dempster has cautioned that for researchers whose work centres on embodied, fleshy, sensory modes of thinking and knowing, becoming interdisciplined carries particular risks, including the pressure to adopt the genres and discourses of more ‘powerful’ disciplines (2018). We therefore invite reflections on the epistemological positioning of sensory methods within the contemporary academy and interdisciplinary projects; in particular, how sound, voice and music are understood within paradigms of knowledge exchange, impact, and public engagement, as well as within modes of data collection or elicitation often positioned as ‘creative methods’ (Kara, 2020).

We encourage contributions emerging from different research approaches, including practice research, participatory action research and art-based methodological contexts, as well as historiographical and (auto)ethnographic approaches which surface sense and sensation.

We also invite responses from interdisciplinary practitioners, and those working at the intersection of the arts, sciences, and humanities, whose theoretical and methodological approaches may expand the conceptual horizons of our inquiry. This includes but is not limited to: collaborations between artists and cognitive and perceptual science; psychology and phenomenology; acoustics and psychoacoustics; architecture and design; environmental humanities; rehabilitation, clinical, and therapeutic practices; and those developing novel enhanced or augmentory sensory technologies (for example immersive audio and audiovisual works, VR/XR/AR).

Topic Areas
Submissions are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics:
· Sound and sensory perception (e.g. how is acoustic data mediated and manipulated across bodily systems, and technologies?)
· Sensory pedagogies (e.g. engaging sensation and embodied methods within teaching practices for SVM)
· Sensing audience experience (e.g. perception, reception, and processing for those engaging with SVM)
· SVM and synaesthesia (e.g. unifications, dialogues, and overlaps in sensory experience)
· Decolonising the sensorium in SVM (e.g. embodiment and sensation as counter-hegemonic domains)
· Composing with/in sensory media (e.g. how do creators engage the sensory capacities and experiences of performers and audiences within their work that features sound or voice or music?)
· Disability and the senses within SVM (e.g. neurophysiological diversity, divergence, and modes of experience)
· SVM and digital immersion (e.g. ASMR, hypermedia, VR/AR/XR, haptic audio feedback, and composing for immersive technologies)
· SVM, space and place (e.g. design for acoustic architecture, material acoustics, spatial music, soundscape composition)
· The Sensory experience of SVM as social interaction and cultural mediation
· More than five senses, cross-cultural and historical perspectives on SVM within sensory schema
· Sensory mediation and digital technologies on SVM (e.g. in what ways can digital prostheses augment and enhance, as well as trouble and obscure, human sensory capacities?)
· Sensing (with) the more-than-human (e.g. ethical, aesthetic, and practical considerations in SVM collaboration with non-human beings)

Technical Info
In response to the above areas, we invite proposals from researchers and practitioners across disciplines (for example, theatre and performance studies, musicology, music technology, sound studies and sound art, interaction/interface design, performance and dance). Possible forms/formats include:
· paper presentations formal papers (up to 20 minutes)
· provocations or position statements (up to 10 minutes)
· practice research sharings (up to 20 minutes, including verbal outline or framing)
· videographic or audiovisual presentation (up to 15 minutes)
· Workshop activity for WG members (30-45 min)

Additionally, you are welcome to make a proposal for an optional (online, in-person, hybrid) social or workshop activity for WG members, which you would organize, lasting between 30-90 minutes. One or more of these activities might take place during the conference.

References:
Classen, C., (2023) [1993]. Worlds of sense: Exploring the senses in history and across cultures. Routledge.
Dempster, E. (2018). Undisciplined Subjects, Unregulated Practices: Dancing in the Academy. In C. Brown & A. Longley (Eds), Undisciplining dance in nine movements and eight stumbles (pp. 39–48). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1947806
Howes, D., (2022). The sensory studies manifesto: Tracking the sensorial revolution in the arts and human sciences. University of Toronto Press.
Kara, H. (with Gergen, K. J., & Gergen, M. M.). (2020). Creative research methods: A practical guide (Second edition). Policy Press.
Spatz, B. (2017). Embodiment as First Affordance: Tinkering, Tuning, Tracking. https://core.ac.uk/reader/78074350

Please note: only one proposal may be submitted for a TaPRA event. It is not permitted to submit multiple proposals or submit the same proposal to several Calls for Participation. All presenters must be TaPRA members, i.e. registered for the event; this includes presentations given by Skype or other media broadcast even where the presenter may not physically attend the event venue.