Nexus

The Impact of Opportunity: Reflections of a TASA 2024 Bursary Recipient by Devpriya Chakravaty.

Attending TASA's 2024 conference allowed me to present my paper titled ‘Understanding the Vibe: Exploring Festivalisation and Sociocultural Dynamics in Urban India's EDM Scene’ which draws on my recently completed doctoral work on the ethnographic explorations of Indian Electronic Dance Music Culture (EDMC). The primary focus of my paper was to discuss how EDM festivals, while operating as commercial spaces, function as sites of collective sociation and affect. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, the paper aimed to unpack the sociological lived experiences of being a cultural member of Indian EDMC for the urban youth of the country. One of the underlying objectives of my study is to highlight localised manifestations and situated performances of and within a global popular music culture in the Global South, a vastly understudied area of research.

Given the focus of my study and my research alignment, I presented within the Sociology of Music stream this year. This has been a valuable experience for me, especially because this was the first session for the Thematic Group at a TASA conference since its formation earlier this year. Being part of the Thematic Group has been significant for me as an early career researcher, allowing me to meet and network with other sociologists with a similar research focus as mine.

The Grant Writing Workshop at TASA has been the other highlight of my TASA 2024 conference experience. As an early career researcher, attending the workshop helped me grasp the complex and nuanced nature of the process and I am keen to apply the acquired knowledge towards more materialized gains. Overall, it was a delight to meet scholars from all over the world and across Australia and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to have attended TASA this year.

In addition to paper presentations, workshops and academic networking, I found the conference buddy system rather fruitful. Having attended TASA before and being a TASA member, I was paired with a PhD student who was new to conference attendance at large. The act of sharing my experiences with her and learning about her research proved very meaningful to my whole conference experience.

Needless to say, being a recent PhD graduate, financial precarity would have made affording the conference travel significantly harder had it not been for the generous travel bursary. I am thankful towards TASA's community to have granted me the travel bursary that immensely helped me not only attend the conference in person but also allowed me the chance to connect with the community of researchers, professionals and sociologists through TASA 2024.

Figure 1 Presenting an extension of doctoral research at TASA 2024, within the Sociology of Music Stream