Call for papers: Global Arts and Psychology Seminar (GAPS)

Call for papers: Global Arts and Psychology Seminar (GAPS) - Friday-Saturday 28-29 April 2017 
Boston, Buenos Aires, Graz, Sheffield, Sydney 
 
Content: GAPS is about the arts and the people who create and appreciate them, from a psychological perspective. “The arts” include auditory arts (music, sound design), visual arts (painting, architecture), literature, drama, opera, digital arts, and so on. We will focus on music. There will be about 8 research presentations at each hub. There will also be 3 keynotes, which will be viewed by all hubs. 
 
Format: To our knowledge, GAPS will be the world’s first semi-virtual academic conference. GAPS will strike a new balance between face-to-face and virtual communication, and between activities on different continents, to create a truly global conference. Every talk will be both live and virtual - presented to a live local audience and viewed elsewhere, either in real time or with a time delay. Live and virtual presentations will run in parallel at every hub. In July 2018, the new format will be scaled up for the international music psychology conference ICMPC15/ESCOM10. 
 
Timing: GAPS will present current research by students at hubs in Boston (UTC/GMT-4 hours), Buenos Aires (-3), Sheffield (+1), Graz (+2), and Sydney (+10). The program at each hub will be divided into two half-days (morning and evening), during which participants will communicate in real time with 1-2 other hubs, depending on time differences. 
 
Technology: All talks will be live-streamed and recorded in YouTube. Both live streams and videos will be unlisted - available to registered participants only, in a password protected teaching platform (Moodle). All discussions will be documented as comment feeds. During global discussions, session chairs will select questions from the real-time comment feed and pose them to presenters. Remote questioners will witness the question and answer on the live stream. 
 
Organizers: Each hub has a senior organizer as follows: 
· Isabel Martinez, Laboratorio para el Estudio de la Experiencia Musical, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina 
· Richard Parncutt, Centre for Systematic Musicology, University of Graz, Austria 
· Emery Schubert, School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia 
· Renee Timmers, Department of Music, Sheffield University, UK 
· Parke Wilde, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston USA 
 
Beyond some initial guidelines, the conference will be organized by graduate students. The main student organizers are: 
· Boston: Ola Ozernov-Palchik (contact email for questions: parke.wilde@tufts.edu) 
· Buenos Aires: To be announced 
· Graz: Maximilian Burkard (maximilian.burkard@googlemail.com) 
· Sheffield: Shen Li (SLi37@sheffield.ac.uk) 
· Sydney: Riza Veloso (r.veloso@unsw.edu.au) 
 
How to submit an abstract. Doctoral and advanced Master’s students who would like to present their research at GAPS are asked to create an account in EasyChair, find this call for papers here, and enter a title of 50-150 characters (including spaces) and a structured abstract of 400-500 words. The headings for empirical abstracts are Background, Aims, Method, Results, and Conclusions, and the headings for theoretical abstracts are Background, Aims, Detail, Conclusions, and Implications (no references). Please also enter SIX keywords and THREE topics. It is ok to summarize a talk that has already been given (talk duration is 15 minutes). 
 
For example, to enter an empirical abstract, write it in the following form in a separate document, and copy-paste into EasyChair. 

Background 

This is the background section. 

Aim 

This is the main aim (or aims) of your study. 

Method 

The main points about your method go here. 

Results 

The main results go here. 

Conclusions 

The main conclusions go here. 

Deadline. The submission deadline may be different for each hub. In any case, it is soon! Please contact the local student organizer or refer to the call for papers distributed by your hub. 

Note for the Boston hub. The event will be on April 28 at the Tufts Medford/Somerville campus (building TBA). Please submit abstracts by April 7 (previously presented work is fine, late submission may be okay).