Foundation of the European Sound Studies Association

These days the international and interdisciplinary efforts to combine the research approaches to sound studies result in a crucial step towards greater coherence: the most renowned and experienced researchers and artists in this field – from Jonathan Sterne, Karin Bijsterveld, Jean-Paul Thibaud, Simon Zagorski-Thomas, Michael Bull and Mark M. Smith up to Ola Stockfelt, Morten Michelsen, Heikki Uimonen, Marcel Cobussen, Holger Schulze, Erik Granly Jensen and David Toop – have decided to go one step further and to found a European Sound Studies Association.

The aim of the European Sound Studies Association is to provide an international, interdisciplinary and interprofessional organization for promoting the study of sound in conferences, summer schools, workshops and research projects.

Thus, the ESSA and its various outlets (website, social media, publications, special issues in journals, workshops, conferences and international research projects) will provide a comprehensive forum, online and offline, where those involved in the study of sound may engage in the relevant discourse and present their research findings, new methods and insights. A number of curated materials from a set of basic publications up to crucial auditory resources will be provided.

This new association will encourage and help to structure the development of research in the sound studies and the systematic research in topics and in areas where such study is not well developed. It will also provide support for researchers and scholars who aim at founding a teaching programme concerning sound studies – be it a BA-, MA- or PhD-programmes or even a programme in the field of artistic/design practice or artistic research.

Or as Björn Hellström once wrote:

Ljud fungerar som en abstrakt skalstock, genom vilken vi kan formulera frågeställningar relevanta för […] exempelvis samband mellan konstnärlig kvalitet, social hållbarhet och offentligt rum.

You can join the ESSA via an online form right here.