Call for Papers: FRIM Annual Conference 2027 at CHRIST University, Bengaluru

The Forum for Research in Indian Music (FRIM) holds its second Annual Conference on 4–6 February 2027 in collaboration with the Department of Music, CHRIST University, at the Central Campus in Bengaluru. The conference runs in hybrid mode — in person and online — and brings together scholars and practitioners who study Indian music in its performative, textual and theoretical dimensions.

Theme: Histories, Practices and Aesthetics

FRIM invites papers that critically engage with the musical traditions and practices of India — tribal, folk, classical, popular and religious — through performance, repertoire, pedagogy, history, patronage, technique and aesthetics, or through musical texts: treatises, compositions, commentaries and notation, and how they relate to practice. Newer musical expressions, music in conversation with other disciplines, and the ways technology, institutions and changing performance contexts are transforming Indian music are equally welcome.

Possible directions include histories of performance, pedagogy or patronage; transmission of musicological knowledge (oral, textual, digital); intersections with dance, ritual or religious practice; analytical studies of rāga, tāla or compositional forms; readings of Indian musicological texts and manuscript studies; music and aesthetics in Indian philosophical systems; colonial and postcolonial knowledge formations; comparative and global musicology; psychoacoustics; histories of instruments and techniques; and questions of concept and method.

Submissions are welcome from academics and researchers as well as performer-scholars, practitioner-researchers and those working across disciplines.

Formats

Individual papers — 20-minute presentation and 10 minutes of discussion.

Thematic panels — three to four papers with a moderator; 60 minutes of presentations and 30 of discussion. Proposals: Editor@frim.co.in.

Lecture-demonstrations or practice-based presentations — 20 minutes and 10 minutes of discussion.

How to submit

An abstract of 100–400 words and a 100-word biography (with institutional affiliation, if any). The abstract should state the purpose and scope of the study, the methodology, and the findings and conclusions, in objective and analytical language. Abstracts are submitted through the form on frim.co.in.

Key dates

Abstract and panel proposals: 10 October 2026

Notification of acceptance: 10 November 2026

Draft papers: 10 December 2026

Conference theme, guidelines and the submission form: www.frim.co.in · Venue: CHRIST University, Central Campus, Bengaluru (map).