The Ninth BiennialChristian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives ConferenceRipon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, United Kingdom6–9 July 2027Congregational music-making is a vital and vibrant practice within Christian communities worldwide. It reflects, informs, and articulates convictions and concerns that are irreducibly local even as they flow along global networks. The Christian Congregational Music Conference aims to expand the avenues of scholarly inquiry into congregational music-making by bringing together world-class scholars and practitioners to explore the varying cultural, social, and spiritual roles music plays in the life of various Christian communities around the world. We are pleased to invite proposals for the ninth biennial conference at Ripon College in Cuddesdon, near Oxford, United Kingdom, from Tuesday, 6 July to Friday, 9 July, 2027. The conference will feature guest speakers, roundtables, and workshops that reflect the ever-broadening scope of research and practice in Christian congregational music-making around the world.Proposals on any topic related to the study of congregational music-making will be considered, but we especially welcome submissions that explore one or more of the following themes:Cognition, Psychology, and Neurodivergence Congregational music has profound psychological effects on those who engage in it. It moves the emotions, directs attention, cements beliefs, cultivates habits and expectations, guides patterns of thinking, and alters consciousness. It can serve as a means of regulation and coping, or it can disrupt and dysregulate; it can attract or repel those with particular personalities, and it can motivate to action. It can have a complex relationship with matters of mental health and with neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD and Autism. How is music’s psychological potential put to use or exploited in different congregational environments? How do encounters with congregational music vary across broader spectrum of neurodiversity? Where can music’s interaction with psychological processes become difficult, dysfunctional, or problematic? How can awareness of psychological processes and diversity lead to better practices of care?Right-Wing Politics and Changing Global Dynamics Congregational musical practices are deeply intertwined with global movements and power-dynamics from colonial-era hymnody to the cosmopolitan circulation of worship music records, from eschatological imaginations of musical diversity to hymns of liberation and protest. As the global political order shifts in the wake of nationalist governance, new right-wing movements, migrant border controls, and increasing geo-political tensions, how do Christian musical practices evolve and adapt in response? How do musical movements re-align themselves in relation to shifting socio-cultural projects? How do patterns of musical alliance and circulation change? How do Christian musical imaginations narrate this changing world? How do power relationships and dynamics shift with the changing status and perception of particular centres of musical production? Other-than-Human Objects, Beings, and Landscapes While congregational music often foregrounds dimensions of human sociality and relationship with God, it stretches out to include vast webs of relationships with materials, objects, beings, spirits, land, and landscapes that can participate in the musical activity, and make themselves present as well as being exploited or ignored. How does congregational music relate to these non-human participants? How does it do justice to or fail to do justice to the broader actor networks in which it is embedded? How do they find a voice or retreat into the background? How do they contribute to making congregational music what it is? And how are these relationships re-negotiated and re-worked as awareness of them shifts?Teaching and Learning in Congregations and Classrooms Congregational music – as both a practice and as an academic discipline – is taught and learnt in a variety of different ways across church traditions, university and seminary institutions, and a range of informal digital spaces. What is taught and learnt around congregational song, and why? How is it taught, especially across a range of ages and demographics? Whose interests and priorities do curricula serve to reproduce or exclude? What kinds of power relationships do they construct? In what ways do pedagogies change and adapt in light of changing musical practices? How do practice and reflection intersect in different contexts of instruction?Global and Regional Legacies of Vatican IIThe second Vatican council marked a critical turning point within Catholic institutions and congregations, reforming liturgies, reframing ecumenical relationships, and offering new understandings of the role of the congregation. It set an agenda that has catalysed ongoing processes of adaptation, change, and dialogue for more than six decades. What have been the legacies of this process for the musical lives of global Catholic communities in South East Asia, Latin America, or Africa? How do these reforms continue to be negotiated? And how do they interplay with post-colonial and indigenous musical dynamics? How do relationships between Catholic and Protestant musics continue to be sites of contestation or reconciliation? How do geographical power-imbalances and processes of influence continue to be negotiated in the light of theological imperatives and hierarchical realities?Precarity, Patronage, and the Future of the Field The study of congregational music often occupies a precarious position in the academy, sitting between a variety of different disciplinary traditions and institutional interests. This marginal status means that it is often particularly subject to the willingness and ability of different bodies to fund and support it, and it often needs to adapt to their interests and priorities in order to continue. What does the future of the field look like in unsettling economic and political environments? How do budget cuts, alliances between universities and multi-national corporations, or moments of political intervention affect the focus of our work? To what extent do we adapt to or resist the different contexts in which we find ourselves? How does academic anxiety and precarity manifest in our agendas and research programmes? How does institutional patronage shape our work, the topics we teach and study and those we don’t? What kind of agency do we have to influence wider priorities and agendas? We are now accepting proposals for individual papers (20 minutes), organized panels (3 papers), and roundtables. The online proposal form can be found on the conference website: http://congregationalmusic.org/proposals. Individual paper abstracts should be a maximum of 250 words and panel/roundtable abstracts can be up to 300 words in length. Presenters are welcome to include an element of musical performance within their presentations and should indicate in comments if a digital piano will be required in order to do so. Whilst the conference retains its primary identity as an in-person event in Cuddesdon, we acknowledge that international travel can sometimes be challenging and will do our best to accommodate a limited number of remote/digital presentations over the course of the event.Proposals must be received by 1 December 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 15 January 2027, and conference registration will open in February 2027. Further instructions and information will be made available on the conference website at http://congregationalmusic.org.