Call for Abstracts - Aural Diversity Conference
Salford/Greater Manchester and Online
We are pleased to invite you to submit an abstract to present at the 2026 Aural Diversity Conference!
This Aural Diversity Conference is intended to be a friendly, single-track conference for people working in aural diversity from any disciplinary background. We seek contributions from areas including acoustics, architecture, art, audiology, design, education, hearing science, music, psychology, sociology, soundscape, and more. We are especially keen to welcome research students giving their first paper, and lone researchers seeking a community (Of course, professors and PIs are welcome too!).
We are accepting proposals for:
15-minute presentations (online or in person)
Posters (in person only)
Things to know:
There is no registration fee to attend the conference.
The conference will be hybrid: Attendees can choose to attend in-person or online.
Lunch and refreshments will be provided for those attending in person, at no cost.
Abstracts must be submitted by 10th July 2026. Decisions on accepted proposals will be announced by 31st July 2026.
Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, with no references. Note that a wide range of disciplines will be present at the conference. Please write accordingly and include a brief AI statement if necessary.
Formatting guidelines are:
Empirical studies: Background, Aims, Methods, Results, Conclusion and Implications
Non-empirical studies: Background, Aims, Main Contribution, Conclusion and Implications
For presentations and posters, your proposal must include:
Title
Author name(s)
Type of proposal (presentation, poster)
Your preference to present in-person or online
Your institutional affiliation(s)
The email address of the lead author
If you want to present online: What time zone you are in
Please submit your proposal via Microsoft Forms: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=QCm1Zbb0vUGDPTAz7Lz24Tvkb0EcPBJEj8z6vFWE5dlUNjVCT0FTNVNBT1I1OUZSUkxXS1JEOTVPUi4u
Call for Sounds
In addition to talks and posters, we welcome submissions of recorded music and audio recordings, five minutes in length. Selected submissions will be streamed for attendees of the conference only.
Please send us an expression of interest via email (auraldiversityconference@gmail.com). Note that you may submit in this category in addition to either a talk or a poster.
About the Aural Diversity Conference
The 2026 Aural Diversity Conference will occur on 3rd September 2026, at Media City UK in Salford, UK.
This conference is organized by PhD student researchers at the University of Salford, supported by the Leverhulme Trust Aural Diversity Doctoral Research Hub (LAURA). After two years since LAURA’s founding, we are now ready to share our findings and curate widespread interest in aural diversity. Join us for a great opportunity to discuss and disseminate ideas with other researchers and practitioners working on aural diversity topics!
Background on the Aural Diversity Movement
The aural diversity movement springs from the observation that differences in hearing and listening may be better represented by the concept of a diverse range of hearing types instead of a binary normal-impaired model which currently pervades.
Aural diversity has made significant progress since the term was first published in 2017. Following the first conference and concerts in 2019, the Aural Diversity Network has held a series of workshops, conferences, and meetings. In cooperation, Arup has published an Aural Diversity Toolkit, and the Welsh Government has included a section on aural diversity in its noise and soundscape plan. Aurally-diverse thinking has started to influence many disciplines, with acousticians, musicians, psychologists and others questioning the default assumption of normal hearing, altering their practices accordingly.
Accessibility Information
The conference will be hybrid. Please let us know of any accessibility needs when registering, and we will do our best to accommodate (https://buytickets.at/universityofsalford3/2163755). We are happy to discuss any accessibility needs for on-site attendance, via email (auraldiversityconference@gmail.com). Please refer to our website (https://laura.salford.ac.uk/accessibility/) for more information (live captioning, earplugs, text-only versions etc.).
Further Information
Note that online presenters will be required to submit a video recording of their talk prior to the conference day. We will invite accepted speakers to provide a text-only transcript of their presentation or an extended abstract to make the conference more accessible.
If you have any questions, please contact the Aural Diversity Conference organizing committee at auraldiversityconference@gmail.com.
For further information about our work, please visit the conference website at https://laura.salford.ac.uk/conferences/aural-diversity-conference-2026/, and the LAURA department website at https://laura.salford.ac.uk.
You can also follow us on Social Media:
Instagram: @auraldiversity_laura
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/laura-phd-salford.bsky.social
Important Dates
Abstract Submission Deadline: 10 July 2026
Notification for Acceptance: 30 July 2026
Registration deadline for in-person attendance: 20 August 2026
Conference Date: 3 September 2026
https://laura.salford.ac.uk/conferences/aural-diversity-conference-2026/
auraldiversityconference@gmail.com
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