Marta Casals-Balaguer is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Barcelona (UB). She holds a PhD in Sociology from the UB and has Master’s degrees in Cultural Management and in Humanities: Contemporary Art, Literature and Culture from the UOC. Her research focuses on artistic professions, music and education, and culture and gender. She is the coordinator of the Teaching Innovation Group in Music Education (GIDEM-UB), a researcher at the Research group in Music, Voice and Education (GRUMED-UAB), and a member of the management team of the Research Committee on Sociology of Culture and the Arts of the Spanish Federation of Sociology (FES). She has authored various articles and book chapters, and has participated as a speaker at numerous international congresses and conferences. As a musician she has led artistic projects related both to musical performance and to music education.
Steven Farram is Associate Professor of North Australian and Regional Studies (History) at Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia. His main research interests are the history of the Northern Territory and Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia and Timor-Leste. He has had several books and articles published in these areas. Other articles he has written about popular music include, ‘Wage War against Beatle Music! Music and Censorship in Soekarno’s Indonesia’ (2007), ‘Ganyang! Indonesian popular songs from the Confrontation era, 1963-1966’ (2014), and ‘Social and Political Dimensions of 1980s East Timorese Popular Music’ (2020). His most recent book (written with Paolo Fabris), Wild Dogs of Song: Palmerston (Darwin) Dingo Glee Club, 1895-1905 (2022), was a finalist for the Chief Minister’s Northern Territory History Book Award.
Alan Granados Sevilla holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) and a PhD in Social Anthropology from the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH). His research focuses on the relationship between sound and protest, the role of embodiment in popular music, cultural disputes over the meaning of music, and the musical performativity of identity. He has been a professor at the ENAH and the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and currently teaches at the Faculty of Music of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His recent publications include the books Rock mexicano. Un rompecabezas en construcción (2023), Música, sociedad y cultura. Rutas para el análisis socioantropológico de la música (2019), and the articles “Etnografía sonora de la acción colectiva: Una propuesta de recolección e interpretación de datos” (2024) and “Políticas de significación en el documental del rock mexicano” (2023). Since 2020, he has been a national researcher in the National System of Researchers.
Xavier Houtave is a literary scholar specialising in the intersection of literature and music—both classical and popular—as well as twentieth-century poetics. He recently completed an Advanced Master in Literary Studies from KU Leuven with a thesis on Apollonian poetics and the figure of Mozart in the work of Peter Shaffer and Anthony Burgess. Houtave also holds an MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Antwerp, where he graduated magna cum laude and received summa cum laude for his thesis. He has presented his research on the Beatles’ lyrics at international conferences and gained experience in dramaturgy and research through roles at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings at the Free University of Brussels.
Ellen Rutten is Professor of Literature and of Slavic Studies at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and co-founder of the academic solidarity network and NGO The University of New Europe (UNE), which supports students, scholars, artists, musicians, and other cultural workers at risk from Ukraine and other localities across Central and Eastern Europe. Her interests include contemporary and historical (Central- & Eastern-European and global) art, literature, cultural heritage, and social media. Among other publications, she is the author of Sincerity after Communism: A Cultural History (Yale University Press, 2017) and Unattainable Bride Russia (Northwestern University Press, 2010). She is co-editor of Imperfections: Studies in Mistakes, Flaws, and Failures (Bloomsbury, 2022; co-edited with Caleb Kelly and Jacco Kemper) and Memory, Conflict, and New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States (Routledge, 2013; co-edited with Julie Fedor and Vera Zvereva).
Dorine Schellens is Assistant Professor of contemporary Russian and German literature and culture at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her research explores intersections between the cultural histories of Russia and Germany during the late twentieth and twenty-first century. She is currently working on a research project titled Beyond Post-Communism: Imagining the Future in Times of Transition, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). She is also a Principal Investigator in the EU-funded project Eastern Academic Alliance. She is the author of Kanonbildung im transkulturellen Netzwerk (transcript 2021), which examines the transnational reception history of Moscow Conceptualism from the 1970s until today. She is co-editor of Reading Russian Literature, 1980–2024. Literary Consumption, Memory and Identity (Palgrave 2024) and Literaturkontakte: Kulturen – Medien – Märkte (Frank & Timme 2018). Since 2022, she has been active in The University of New Europe (UNE), an NGO supporting students, scholars, and cultural workers at risk due to war violence or political repression.
