University College Dublin
School of Music
Belfield
Dublin 4, IRELAND
17 December 2013
Dear members,
2013 has been a busy and productive year for ICTM Ireland and we just wanted to take a moment to recap and thank you for your support and membership over the past year. Our annual conference was this year organized in collaboration with the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, and was hosted in April at Queen’s University Belfast. The chosen theme, ‘Ethnomusicology in the Digital Age’, facilitated engaging and productive academic discussions, as well as ensured the vibrant presence and contribution of junior scholars and postgraduate students. We offer thanks to Suzel Reily, Ioannis Tsioulakis, Ray Casserly, and Gordon Ramsey for organizing such a successful event! At the conference, we launched Fieldwork, our CD of field recordings by ethnomusicologists working in Ireland, edited by Desi Wilkinson and Tony Langlois with technical support by Aoife Granville. We are enormously proud of the CD, and are grateful to the contributors and to the Arts Council of Ireland for making it possible. In August, we released the second issue of Ethnomusicology Ireland, our online open-access peer-reviewed journal, edited by Colin Quigley. Liz Doherty and Tony Langlois are currently hard at work on the next edition.
In November, we held our first ever postgraduate conference, ‘Music and Ownership’ at University College Dublin. With 18 student presentations and a lively roundtable discussion, the conference drew a good audience and facilitated valuable conversations amongst the participants. The quality of the papers by Ireland’s postgraduates was extremely high, and we were all very grateful to Sheryl Lynch, our Education Officer, for organizing the event. At the moment, most of the team’s energy is invested in plans for our annual conference, ‘Music, Place, and Community’, which will take place at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway, from the 21st to the 23rd of February 2014. Professor Martin Stokes will give the keynote address. The conference has generated a great deal of interest, with the committee receiving an unprecedented number of proposals this year, which is great news for the progress of ethnomusicology in Ireland. We are just about to send out acceptance notifications, and the programme will be announced in January.
Thank you all so much for your continued support of ICTM Ireland. On behalf of the National Committee, I’d like to wish you a joyful holiday season and the very best for 2014. We look forward to seeing you in Galway!
All best,
Jaime Jones
Chair, Irish National Committee of the ICTM
