1. Music and Embodiment
Recent studies of the role of the body in processes of listening, musical production, musical learning and musical emoting have turned in new understandings of corporeal and experiential musicianship/ dance practice (Clayton 2013, Gillan 2013). Yet, stereotypes in popular culture continue to abound of East Asian bodily ‘conservatism’, ‘stiffness’; and ‘inscrutability’. This theme calls for new examinations of whether, and if so, how, different East Asian musical bodies exist and locate themselves culturally, psychologically and materially.

2. Cosmopolitanism, transnational flows, creative labour markets    
While the words ‘global’ and ‘globalisation’ in music have recently taken a back seat against newer terms such as ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘intercultural’ and ‘transnational’, what do they mean in different East Asian musical contexts, and how are they separate or related to each other? The questions may be partly addressed through understanding the above processes through the lenses of shifting global capital and changing creative labour markets, particularly in (but not limited to) the situating of East Asian musical articulations in the world/ fusion music markets, transnational pop (particularly K-pop), and in urban soundscapes. But while such new and exciting conceptualisations of culture continue percolate, where do they leave space for imagining and practising the ‘traditional’ – in postcolonial modernity or otherwise?    

3. Eco-criticism and Music    
As Paris hosts the UN Climate Change Conference in Nov 2015, East Asia agitates and watches with slow but increasing interest. How can music researchers and ethnomusicologists weigh in on a topical subject that has in many ways pushed for wider interdisciplinarity against rising concerns about negotiations with (and impact on) the environment? Following on from Nancy Guy’s (2009) article on Ecomusicology and Taipei’s Tamsui River, this theme encourages researchers to consider music in interaction with the environment in dynamic ecosystems, where sustainability has to be considered through intersecting realms of the physical, material, cultural and politico-economic.    

4. Music history, historical musics, historical reconstructions    
Do researchers of music history in East Asia approach their subject as historians, musicologists, analysts, archaeologists, or ethnomusicologists? This theme addresses the debate of content vs discourse, allowing scholars to reconsider particular East Asian (or not) hermeneutics and approaches to looking at ancient/ historical texts and the reinterpretation of them through contemporary lenses. 

5. New Research