4th Biennial Disability Studies and Music Education Symposium

Disability Studies and Music Education Symposium is an international gathering of scholars exploring disability and inclusion in music education through disability studies, DisCrit (disability and critical race studies), and Disability Justice perspectives. Looking at the nuance of disability from a non-deficit, non-clinical position.

The 4th Biennial International Disability Studies and Music Education Symposium (DS&ME25) seeks to trouble conventional definitions and conceptions of inclusion and access, as many of the extant understandings remain within the hegemonic Western European North American (WENA) discourses (Goodley, 2018). Following the lead of Erol Yildiz and Florian Ohnmacht (2022) and Tuulikki Laes (2017) in music education, we look to discourses of post-inclusion and consider the (im)possibilities of inclusion in order to move toward a model that begins with diversity, access, and agency as a starting place for imagining of music education and resists normative perspectives of treating inclusion as a retrofit to preestablished educational experiences (Dolmage, 2017). Within a new model, music education spaces may have the opportunity to develop new paradigms that move beyond formulaic best practices (Gurgel, 2016; Simon, 2022).

DS&ME25 will take place from April 3, 2025 through April 5, 2025. The symposium welcomes all students, teachers, artistists, scholars, and community members interested in examining and dreaming new ways to (re)consider disability and inclusion in music education. The symposium is free, with donations welcomed, and will take place online, with some satellite locations around the globe available for people interested in presenting or attending in person. All sessions will feature ASL interpretation and live transcription. Please contact [email protected] with any questions and/or to confidentially discuss specific accessibility requirements that you may have. 

Event Venue

Online