This seminar brings together researchers from the TASA Sociology of Music and Sociology of Emotions and Affect thematic groups to explore how music intersects with wellbeing, identity, and emotional life in different socio-political contexts. Drawing on research with orchestral musicians, music listeners, and musical subcultures, the speakers examine how music practices both reflect and shape experiences of pressure, mental health, and collective emotional expression. Together, the contributions highlight the complex relationships between music, work, wellbeing, and affect in contemporary social life.
Event Details:
Date: Thursday 14th May 2026
Time: 12:00pm - 13:00pm (AEST)
Format: Zoom Webinar
Webinar
Cost: complimentary
Your Speakers
Speaker bio:
Dr Penelope Bergen is a lecturer and researcher at the UNSW Canberra School of Business. She is also a professional orchestral violinist and chamber musician with extensive performance experience in Australia and the Netherlands, now combining her passion for music with her academic work. Her research explores how personal, cultural, and professional identities shape workplace cultures and organisational dynamics, particularly in high-pressure and isolated, confined and extreme (ICE) work environments.
Presentation 1: Orchestral work, wellbeing and substance use: exploring psychosocial risks in Australian orchestras
This talk explores psychosocial health and wellbeing in Australian orchestras, drawing on recent research examining music performance anxiety and the use of substances to manage it. Survey and interview data highlight the pressures musicians face in maintaining professional performance standards in highly competitive orchestral environments. With recent changes to Australian Work Health and Safety legislation requiring organisations to address psychosocial hazards in the workplace, the discussion considers how orchestras might better support musicians’ wellbeing while recognising the unique demands of performance work.
Speaker bioDr Dianne Rodger is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Adelaide University and a Hip-Hop fan with a long-term commitment to understanding Hip-Hop culture in so-called Australia. She is currently researching how people remember, archive and perform Hip-Hop histories, work that informed her book The Calling (2023). She is co-editor of Representing Hip Hop Histories, Politics and Practices in Australia (2024).
Presentation 2: “Companion to my mental health”: Young people’s Hip-Hop listening practices and well-being
This talk examines how Hip-Hop music consumption contributes to young people’s well-being, drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews with Hip-Hop fans from Australia. It focuses on their individual listening practices, demonstrating that most participants see their engagements with Hip-Hop music as a beneficial form of emotional regulation or processing which they use to maintain or change mood, and as a form of motivation and self-reflection. However, they also stress a need to carefully balance aspects of Hip-Hop listening that enhance their well-being with practices that are perceived as detrimental – highlighting the multifaceted relationship between music consumption and well-being.
Speaker bio: Dr Belinda Johnson
Belinda Johnson is a social sciences researcher in the Social Equity Research Centre at RMIT University. Her research curiosity is in intersections of diverse bodies, creative practices and collective, grassroots social change. Alongside her research on dance and Down syndrome for social change, lately she has been noticing and thinking about punk rock feminism. Belinda was part of The Betty Longshots, a 90s feminist band based in Melbourne (alongside fellow TASA member Prof Anita Harris).
Presentation 3: Midlife riot: "Menopausal" punk as collective feminist affective practice
“There is nothing more punk than a menopausal woman” asserted Kathi Wilcox from germinal 90s feminist punk band Bikini Kill in 2024. This idea resonates through an emergent cultural moment that connects a collective somatic arrival into menopausal age with 90s feminist punk rock, visible in streaming content, biographies and everyday music-making. I consider the socio-political nurturance of this punk rock feminism as an affective and material sensorium that generates practices of care from (menopausal) gen X’s collective rage. I explore the limits and affordances of this punk rock feminism to other contemporary gendered injustices.