9-10 October 2026, Istanbul

Orient-Institut Istanbul

Call for Papers

In honour of Hugo Ströbaum

Die Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger (GHT) and Orient-Institut Istanbul

Deadline for submissions: 15 April 2026

Programme committee: Dr. Inja Stanović (GHT, ERA, University of Surrey), Dr. Cüneyt Ersin Mıhcı (Orient-Institut Istanbul), Dr. Will Sumits (Orient-Institut Istanbul)

Die Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger (GHT) is a non-profit association founded in Vienna in November 2002 and open to members worldwide. Its mission is to preserve historical sound recordings and to document, archive, and make their data and content accessible in accordance with scholarly standards. GHT also works to raise public awareness of this field and to promote related activities.

GHT’s annual conference, Diskografentag 2026, will be hosted by the Orient-Institut Istanbul and is dedicated to the memory of Hugo Strötbaum (1946–2026), whose tireless work greatly contributed to discographic research in the eastern Mediterranean. This two-day conference will provide a forum for researchers, enthusiasts, and collectors to come together to discuss historical recordings, technologies, and practices.

The Programme Committee welcomes proposals for individual papers (20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions), longer presentations (30 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions), and round-table discussions (90 minutes in total). GHT members and non-members alike—including musicologists, academics, musicians, collectors, enthusiasts, early-career researchers, and PhD students—are warmly invited to submit proposals. The conference language is English, but we welcome papers in Turkish that could be presented in English on behalf of the author.

We welcome contributions on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to:

Early recordings from the eastern Mediterranean and extending to South and Southeast Asia

Ethnomusicological aspects of historical recorded materials

Ethnomusicological collections and recording practices

Discographies and record archiving

The development and compilation of discographies

Database creation for discographic data and audio files

Conference programme