So looking forward to this conference at MediaCityUK, the culmination of our three-year HERA-funded European jazz research project, Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities. We have over 100 delegates coming from 20 countries, and I am especially looking forward to seeing the British jazz historian and photographer Val Wilmer talking, about some of her famous images and her career, on the Sunday. And there’s a photography exhibition, with a special commission, several bands playing live, a music commission too. (The full programme is here.) So we have academics, independent researchers, media practitioners, musicians, all talking as an international community of jazzers. As my friend and colleague—and you know what, we are all friends and colleagues on this project, that’s been one of the many great things about it—Prof Tony Whyton puts it, in his welcome notes in the conference programme:Rhythm Changes has drawn on the expertise of 13 researchers who work across 7 institutions in 5 European countries, but the growing network of partners, musicians and scholars—including those participating in the 2011 ‘Jazz and National Identities Conference’ in Amsterdam and ‘Rethinking Jazz Cultures’ in Salford—means that the scope and impact of Rhythm Changes is ever widening. Our packed conference programme offers stimulating keynote presentations and panels, plenary sessions, papers, performances, poster presentations and exhibitions, all of which should [will!] generate high quality debate and discussion. Rhythm Changes has sought to encourage people to rethink the way jazz has been articulated, represented and understood, and this conference will be a powerful reflection of this core aim.
AHRC website announces Rethinking Jazz Cultures
30 years since legendary anarcho-punk group Crass released their highly challenging LP Yes Sir, I Will, this symposium will explore the impact and long-lasting legacy of Crass and anarcho-punk. Crass are widely perceived as ‘reluctant leaders’ of the anarcho-punk scene; an ironic title for self-proclaimed anarchists, of course. The central question, for this study day, is: were Crass and anarcho-punk scene significantly effective politically or, alternatively, was the anarcho-punk scene surreptitiously more about clothes, music, image and ‘symbolic rebellion’ (to use Adorno’s term)?
We are currently inviting 20-minute papers that will deal with the theory and representation of space in any of its manifestations, or that, in the process of studying particular texts or media, will take into account space in a significant manner. We are especially interested in proposals addressing—but not limited to—any of the following themes:
Proposals of 400 words should be submitted by 8th of April, 2013 and should be submitted electronically through the IBACS conference 
