Co-edited by Catherine Hoad (Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, Aotearoa) and Freya Linke-Langley (Griffith University, Australia) 

This special issue of Perfect Beat showcases the wealth of transformative, community-engaged research on popular music and gender currently being undertaken by postgraduate students and early career researchers in Australia and Aotearoa. Building on an established body of scholarship exploring how gender has shaped ways of being and understandings of popular music, this contemporary surge of research extends and expands this work through a series of nuanced and complex engagements with gender discourses and gender identities as these intersect with the musical contexts and communities of our region. 

Curated as an extended series of short-form Riffs, this special edition will offer a rich cross-section of the diverse, intersectional work on music and gender that is being led by an emergent generation of scholars. Driven by an ethos of doing research that matters to the people who participate in it, such work, with its array of research methods, theoretical approaches, sites of analysis, and researcher positionalities, is proving vital in making critical interventions beyond academia into music communities and industry structures within the Australia-Aotearoa context.

For this special issue, we invite Riffs/short-form contributions (2000-2500 words, plus references) highlighting current research on music and gender by postgraduate students and early career researchers (< 5 years post-degree) who are based in Australia or Aotearoa, or situated internationally and undertaking research on the interplay of popular music and gender in this region. Whilst the primary focus is on Australia and Aotearoa, we strongly welcome contributions on the intersections of music and gender in the Pacific more widely. Riffs can take a variety of forms, including academic essays, reflective and experimental writing, and visual essays. 

Key themes could broadly include, but are not limited to - 

• the changing role of gender identities in national musical cultures in the region
• the regional impacts of #metoo, and ongoing gender equity advocacy in the music communities
• Gender identity as this shapes opportunities and barriers within local music scenes 
• Intersections of gender identity with Indigenous knowledge and experiences 
• Gender in music education and training
• Gender and music careers 
• Gender identities and LGBTQIA+ representation in music communities 
• Music's intersections with trans and gender diverse experiences
• Gender and its interplay with accessibility in music contexts 
  
  

Please send abstracts (200 words, PDF or Word doc) to c.hoad@massey.ac.nz by end of day March 27. Abstracts should outline the proposed contribution, plus a title, brief bio (50 words), and a contact email.  Full submission of short-form pieces for peer review will be by August 2026.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.