Welcome to EMS21 decorative dots

After careful consideration and accepting our new unfortunate reality for what it is, the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Directors along with the Scientific Committee for EMS21 have taken the decision to move EMS20 to EMS21 which will take place in November 2021.

All proposals that have been/will be accepted for EMS20 will automatically be accepted for EMS21. Nonetheless, we shall send out a call, as always, for new submissions sometime this autumn, assuming that a semblance of normal life has returned. The conference theme and breadth of thematic subjects will not be altered.

All information will be made available on the EMS Network site: www.ems-network.org..

On behalf of all of us, we wish you all great strength and good health during this unique and anguishing period.


“The EMS Network has been organised to fill an important gap in terms of electroacoustic music, namely focusing on the better understanding of the various manifestations of electroacoustic music. Areas related to the study of electroacoustic music range from the musicological to more interdisciplinary approaches, from studies concerning the impact of technology on musical creativity to the investigation of the ubiquitous nature of electroacoustic sounds today. The choice of the word, ‘network’ is of fundamental importance as one of our goals is to make relevant initiatives more widely available.” (http://www.ems-network.org)

Music, Technology and Innovation – Institute for Sonic Creativity (MTI2)
De Montfort University, Leicester UK
Wed. 10 – Sat. 13 November 2021

EMS21 Conference Theme:
Future Directions of Electroacoustic Music Studies

Celebrating 20 years of Music, Technology & Innovation at De Montfort University, and 25 years of the ‘Organised Sound’ journal, 2021 is an opportune moment to investigate the state of our field and, perhaps more importantly, look to the future. As sonic creativity continues to develop rapidly, its field of study is arguably still in search of itself. Are we suffering from the old adage that music cannot be studied until it has existed for a long time? Or perhaps from our field being too interdisciplinary in nature?

EMS21 seeks to present, alongside up-to-date research results, a number of papers investigating how today’s and tomorrow’s specialists expect this important field to evolve. Will it settle in as a contemporary sub-area of musicology? Or will it find its own foci of scholarly endeavour thanks to the fact that it incorporates all sounds as well as many forms of technology?

Keynote Speakers

Georgina Born (Oxford University)

Simon Emmerson (De Montfort University)