2025 MSA and NZMS Joint Conference
Joint Conference of the New Zealand Musicological Society and the Musicological Society of Australia
Joint Conference of the New Zealand Musicological Society and the Musicological Society of Australia
29 November – 1 December 2025
Hosts: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Venue: Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts, University of Waikato, Knighton Road, Hamilton, NZ (see https://www.waikato.ac.nz/news-events/venues-and-event-services/hamilton-campus/the-academy/)
Convenors: University of Waikato with support from Waikato Institute of Technology
Organisation: reviews of papers and programming by combined NZMS/MSA committees; conference organisation led by Lucien Johnson (University of Waikato) and Nick Braae (Wintec)
The Value of Music/ology
Members of music departments as well as wider creative industries feel a keen sense of precarity at the present time. This sentiment persists despite growing research that highlights the benefits of music and creativity for individuals’ well-being, as well as social cohesion and belonging; and the determined efforts by those in higher education to productively mould curricula and research to the needs of a changing world. The existential threats are often framed in financial terms, though other issues of worth and relevance are implicated. In a saturated media environment, how can music and discourse around music cut through the noise? How can we articulate the broader importance of studying and understanding music – not only to students and various institutional bodies, but also to wider communities? Perhaps more than ever, there is a need for further consideration of how music and musicology (broadly conceived) may be considered to hold value in our modern world.
Keynote Speakers
We are delighted to welcome Laura Case and Samantha Owens to present keynote addresses at the conference.
Laura Case is a Wiradjuri lecturer in musicology and the Associate Dean of Indigenous Strategy and Services at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Her research explores the social and cultural history of music in Australia, with a particular focus on the violin, cross-cultural interactions, and feminist perspectives. She is also particularly passionate about using music to reframe Indigenous histories and reclaim Indigenous knowledge.
A classically trained violinist with over 25 years of experience, Laura performs with pioneering Indigenous hip hop artist Rhyan Clapham (DOBBY), Aboriginal country singer Uncle Roger Knox, and is a member of Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s Ensemble Dutala – Australia’s only Aboriginal chamber ensemble. Her first book A Socio-Cultural History of the Violin in Australia: Identity, Resilience, and Colonial Legacy is forthcoming with Routledge in 2026.
Samantha Owens is an Honorary Professor of Music at the University of Queensland. She has published widely on the music history of early modern Europe, 1600–1760 and the performance cultures of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, 1850–1950, including in such journals as Early Music, Eighteenth-Century Music, Music & Letters, Musical Times, Musicology Australia, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and the Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle. Her major publications have included The Well-Travelled Musician: John Sigismond Cousser and Musical Exchange in Baroque Europe (Boydell, 2017), J. S. Bach in Australia: Studies in Reception and Performance, with Denis Collins and Kerry Murphy (Lyrebird, 2018), Searches for Tradition: Essays on New Zealand Music, Past & Present, with Michael Brown (VUP, 2017), and Music at German Courts, 1715–1760: Changing Artistic Priorities, with Barbara Reul and Janice Stockigt (Boydell, 2011). A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, she has held visiting fellowships at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel; Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; and – as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow – at both the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. In 2025 she is the National Library of New Zealand’s Lilburn Research Fellow, researching the diverse history of brass bands in Aotearoa, 1840–1920.
Program and Conference Information
https://www.ivvy.com.au/event/TNDDXL/programme-and-keynotes.html