Please respond by 8th April 2021

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) invites expressions of interest from institutions interested in hosting the BFE Annual and One-Day Conferences in 2022 and 2023.

Annual Conferences 2022 and 2023

BFE Annual Conferences run for four days (from Thursday to Sunday) and are usually held in April during the Easter vacation period. Annual Conferences typically have a theme, although delegates may present research on any subject of interest to ethnomusicologists. A summary of past Annual Conferences can be found at https://bfe.org.uk/conference-archive-annual.

One-Day Conferences 2022 and 2023

BFE One-Day Conferences are usually held on Saturdays in November (although late October and early December are also possibilities). They are more narrowly themed than Annual Conferences and focus on specific, sometimes emerging, areas of ethnomusicologicial enquiry. Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. A summary of past One-Day Conferences can be found at https://bfe.org.uk/conference-archive-one-day.

Expressing Interest

For further information or informal conversations about the possibility of hosting these conferences, please contact Matthew Machin-Autenrieth at matthew.machin-autenriethabdn.ac.uk (in relation to the annual conference) and Stephen Wilford at stw31cam.ac.uk (in relation to the one-day conference). We would be happy to meet to discuss hosting during the forthcoming Annual Conference at the University of Aberdeen.

To express interest, please send no more than one side of paper outlining
• a proposed theme;
• who will be responsible for planning the event;
• the advantages of hosting it at your institution.

Call for New BFE Committee Members

Deadline for Nominations: Friday 19^th March 2021

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology seeks nominations for election for 4 positions on the BFE Committee. The terms of some current members of the BFE Committee members are coming an end; some Committee members will be standing down while others intend to stand for re-election.

It is vital for the future of the BFE that we have a strong Committee so please do consider nominating yourself. We are looking for committed committee members who will make an important contribution to the day-to-day running and future development of the BFE. In line with our equality ambitions as a subject association, we welcome nominations that will help the Committee reflect the diversity of our membership and discipline.

General responsibilities of Committee members include:

• attending 2-3 BFE Committee meetings each year
• engaging proactively in BFE business
• contributing creatively to BFE strategies and initiatives
• engaging in regular email communication with the Committee
• writing short reports on BFE activities for the annual Chair’s Report
• participating, when necessary, in working groups on specific BFE tasks

The specific roles for committee members in this election round are:

1. Conference Liaison Co-Officer

The Conference Liaison Co-Officers  are jointly responsible for:

• organizing the BFE’s annual and one-day conferences, study days and other events in conjunction with local conference arrangement committees
• representing the BFE at the January BFE–RMA Research Students’ Conference (each January), at meetings of the RMA Flagship Conferences Subcommittee (2 or 3 per year), and through regular correspondence with the RMA and other subject associations (e.g., SEM, Analytical Approaches to World Music, Société Française d’Ethnomusicologie)
• providing oral reports on conference activities at BFE committee meetings

2. Membership Liaison Officer

This role includes:

• Developing productive relations between the BFE membership and the Committee, and bringing forward issues from members for consideration by BFE executive committee.
• Working on membership and marketing initiatives in conjunction with the BFE General Administrator (Dr Morgan Davies) and the Membership Administrator (Dr Raquel Campos)

3. Student Liaison Officer

This role includes:

• Maintaining and developing communications channels between the BFE student membership and the committee
• Reporting to the BFE Committee on student member activities and achievements
• Developing new content for the BFE Podcast Project and other related initiatives

4. Treasurer

This role includes:

• Being responsible for all aspects of managing the finances of the BFE, working closely with the BFE administrative team
• Preparing a financial report at the end of each year. Previous experience of accounting is desirable

If you wish to stand for election you must be nominated and seconded by two BFE members. Please send a proposal of no more than a single side of A4, which will be forwarded to the BFE membership by email and our list serve prior to voting. Include:

• Your name and a contact address
• Your current employment
• The names of the BFE members who have nominated and seconded your candidacy (it is not necessary for the nominators to email the Chair separately about the nomination)
• Length of time you have been a BFE member
• The specific role – from the 4 roles listed above – for which you would like to be nominated
• A statement outlining your suitability for service on the BFE Committee, highlighting relevant skills and experience

Nominations must be sent by email to Simon McKerrell (chairbfe.org.uk (chairbfe.org.uk)) and copied to Morgan Davies (adminbfe.org.uk) by the end of Friday 19^th March 2021.

In order to vote you need to be a current member of BFE, so please renew your membership for 2021 if you have not done so already. Online voting will take place soon after the deadline for nominations and the results will be announced at the next AGM. This is scheduled to take place at 11am on Saturday 10^th April, as part of the online proceedings for this year’s Annual Conference, hosted by Bath Spa. I look forward to seeing many of you there.

Simon McKerrell, BFE Chair

We are thrilled to announce that three fieldwork grants have been awarded for the 2021 BFE Fieldwork Grants scheme. Hearty congratulations are due to Meg Hyland, Rim Jasmin Irscheid and and Natalie Mason, our 2021 award recipients. The winners introduce their exciting research projects below, and we look forward to hearing more about their work when they return from the field.

Meg Hyland (University of Edinburgh) Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, thousands of women worked each year as itinerant herring gutters in Britain and Ireland. Travelling from sometimes remote islands and coming from diverse linguistic backgrounds, they congregated in major fishing ports and worked side-by-side gutting, salting and packing the herring into barrels. My research looks at the role music played in their working lives, including work songs as well as songs sung during the dances they hosted on the weekends in their temporary lodgings. While my previous research has established that Gaelic-speaking women sang semi-improvised dance songs (puirt-à-beul) while gutting, I am next looking to research the musical cultures of women from Shetland who worked in the industry. I plan to travel to the Shetland Museum and Archives to research their oral history material, which includes dozens of interviews of people connected to the industry. I will be particularly interested to determine to what extent women in Shetland sang sacred versus secular songs while working, and what level of interaction they had with women from Gaelic-speaking backgrounds, since the multi-cultural nature of the industry often led to musical cross-fertilization.
	Rim Jasmin Irscheid (King’s College London) My project is concerned with representations of hybridity, difference and movement in collaborative music projects across Lebanon, Jordan and the Arab diaspora in Germany. I aim to find out how first and second generation Arab migrants network, produce and showcase experimental music arising from collaborations within and across these three countries. During field work in Beirut, Amman, Mannheim and Berlin, I will spend time in places of great sociability between artists of different backgrounds, in particular recording studios, green rooms, festival sites and rehearsal spaces. I will look not only into the collaborative compositional process among musicians, but the social and political environment of their sound experiments. I also plan to examine images and video material used in the marketing of these projects with regard to cultural representations of Arab musicianship in German media texts. My focus lies specifically on the rhetoric of cultural institutions and experimenting artists that vehemently oppose affiliations with the European ‘world music’ market and instead, offer musical self-representations that distort or even disguise imagined markers of Arab identity and citizenship altogether.
Natalie Mason (University of Birmingham) My PhD focuses on the international musicking of children and families in community and education settings in the West Midlands. Following a decade of community music work in the UK and South Africa, my research is informed by participant-led practice. I aim to expand an interdisciplinary understanding of the role children play in the creation and continuation of diverse musical cultures whilst extending practical and academic connections between ethnomusicology, community music and music education. In response to the current pandemic situation, I have updated and transformed my methodology. Informed by recent scholarship on participatory fieldwork methods and hybrid ethnography, I am drawing on new technological approaches to support the child-centred narrative within my dissertation, whilst remaining adaptable to remote or in-person activity. My research will allow me to document and develop pedagogical approaches for international musicking, in collaboration with children and families, whilst deepening an understanding of fieldwork methodologies across online and offline spaces. I hope to contribute to ethnomusicological scholarship on children’s musicking, participatory practice and audio-visual technology in the hybrid field.

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) seeks to form an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Working Group to advise the BFE Committee on improving all aspects of the BFE’s governance, sustaining interaction with the membership, and maintaining safe spaces for scholarly engagement on topics of interest to ethnomusicologists.

Call for EDI Lead

We first seek self-nominations for an EDI Lead to chair the Working Group. To be appointed for an initial two-year term, the EDI Lead will receive an honorarium of £1,000 per annum, with a review of the role after the two-year term.

In consultation with and with support from the BFE Committee, the EDI Lead sets the agenda of the Working Group. Tasks include but are not limited to:

1. Recommending ways the BFE Committee can implement the ‘EDI and Anti-racist action’ plan distributed to the BFE membership on 27^th October 2020
2. Advising the BFE Committee on a policy for reporting equality concerns raised by members and creating an anonymized and safe reporting mechanism
3. Proposing guidelines for MA and PhD supervisors on equitable and safe mentorship
4. Organising workshops for music scholars underrepresented in UK academia on grant capture and professional development
5. Liaising with the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies (EDIMS) on events of interest to the BFE membership
6. Other work fostering a more equitable, diverse and inclusive environment for ethnomusicology in the United Kingdom

The EDI Lead also will produce quarterly reports for the BFE Committee on the activities of the Working Group, identifying policies and practices implemented, as well as suggesting future improvements to BFE policy and governance.

The BFE is committed to ensuring that the Working Group remains a safe space for dialogue and engagement, and we seek an EDI Lead with a keen interest in shaping conversations concerning EDI work within ethnomusicology. In particular, the BFE Committee encourages self-nominations from late-stage PhD students and early career scholars based in the United Kingdom who have training or self-cultivated expertise in identifying structural barriers to equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as formulating anti-racist policy. Candidates who have experience advising and guiding a small team are especially encouraged.

To apply for the EDI Lead role, please send a two-page CV and a 500-word statement detailing (1) how your expertise intersects with the role description and (2) your vision for the work of the Working Group over the next two years. Please send all materials by 28^th February to Dr Raquel Campos (membershipbfe.org.uk).

Call for Working Group Members

We also seek self-nominations from ethnomusicologists interested in serving on the Working Group. Members of the Working Group will be expected to work collaboratively with the EDI Lead, craft safe spaces for effective conversations on EDI work, and have a demonstrated commitment to anti-racist approaches to education and scholarship.

To apply for a place on the Working Group, please prepare a 250-word statement detailing how you would like to contribute to EDI and anti-racist work within the BFE and send it by 28^th February to Dr Raquel Campos (membershipbfe.org.uk).