Japanese Studies in Bergen 2026

It has been a pleasure to serve on the planning committee for an interdisciplinary Japanese studies conference in Bergen sponsored by the Scandinavia Japan Sasakawa Foundation. The conference will be in mid-November 2026, and includes sessions on an array of topics connected to Japan.

The conference will be hosted at University of Bergen, and the leaders and other members of the planning committee are Benedicte Mosby Irgens, Nathan Hopson, and Shimotori Misuzu (all with the UiB Japan Studies program), as well as Kristin Rygg from the Norwegian School of Economics.

The program will include a music research panel (in which I will join with Matthieu Stepec and Yuki Morijiri) as well as some performances of Japanese and Norwegian music, including pianist Marina Matsuoka.

More information and links will be posted here when made available.

I previously participated in the symposium that first established Master studies in Japanese at University of Bergen a few years ago, as well as the recent events in Bergen commemorating 120 years of diplomatic relations between Japan and Norway.

A Japanese studies conference that we also hosted in Bergen some years ago resulted in THIS BOOK, which I coordinated as editor. With long-term research interests in Japan, I last visited in February of this year to meet officials with the City of Hamamatsu and various music industry experts for development of a large grant application that now includes researchers from the Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments and the Min-On Concert Association. The GAME research group, which I manage in Bergen, is also now hosting a postdoctoral researcher from Japan funded by the Japanese government (JSPS program). 

Here are links to a few recent Japan-related publications:

·       Chiba, M., & Hebert, D. G. (2025). Understandings of inclusivity in music education: a comparative policy study of Luxembourg and Japan. Music Education Research, 27(1), 37-53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2024.2434839

·       Hebert, D. G., & Matsunobu, K. (2024). Learning musical instruments in Japanese schools. In H. Johnson (Ed.), Handbook of Japanese music in the modern era (237–253). Brill. https://brill.com/edcollchap/book/9789004687172/BP000027.xml

 

 

Image source: https://pxhere.com/no/photo/1640826

 

 

Keynote on Music Diplomacy in China

I look forward to giving a keynote speech soon for the International Symposium on Global Dialogue, Inheritance and Innovation of Anhui Traditional Music (Chuzhou University, China). My speech is titled “Approaches to Traditional Music in Cultural Diplomacy”.

Chuzhou, in Anhui province, has a population of around 7 million, and famous people from this city include Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398), who was the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty.

Pictured here is Mt. Huangshan, a renowned landmark from Anhui province.

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Huangshan_pic_4.jpg

 

GAME research group update

The Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group has been quite active across recent years. Click HERE to learn about our activities.

 

Below is the poster for one of our upcoming events that features Dr. Yuki Morijiri, JSPS-funded postdoctoral researcher from Japan.

 

Arctic Music Studies

 

It is exciting to soon be participating in the one music-related presentation at the enormous UArctic Congress to be held in Torshavn, Faroe Islands in May 2026.

The Arctic has long been a culturally fascinating place but it has also increasingly become a region of deep geopolitical interest. Across recent years, I have been part of multiple music-related projects in this dynamic region.

Currently, I lead a work package for the Norwegian Research Council-funded Sapmi Singing Maps project in collaboration with Sami musicians (David T. Johnson, PI). I have also held a position across recent yars as Affiliated Professor with University of the Faroe Islands, where my PhD student Knut Eysturstein will soon defend his dissertation on music heritage and education in the Faroe Islands. Previously, I also performed as part of the Sympathetic Resonance Trio in the Kirkenes area (along the border between Norway and Russia) on a cultural diplomacy tour funded by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat. Recently, I am also developing a large EU grant application that aims to include both Sapmi and Greenland as research sites.  

The UArctic Congress promises to attract many hundreds of participants from across a broad range of academic fields. I look forward to visiting Torshavn again, and it will be exciting to see what the participants can learn from each other there.

 

Image sources:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Circumpolar_coastal_human_population_distribution_ca._2009.png

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Arctic_region_showing_the_Northeast_Passage,_the_Northern_Sea_Route_and_Northwest_Passage,_and_bathymetry.png

 

 

Publications in 2026

 

Some new publications will be coming out in the next few months, including a monograph (book), journal articles, and book chapters. I will add links here when they are made available. Other upcoming publications are more likely to appear in 2027 ... 

 

BOOK:

Xie, J. & Hebert, D. G. (2026). A New Philosophy of Music Education for the Era of AI. Routledge. 

 

BOOK CHAPTERS:

Hebert, D. G. (2026, in press). International Law and Efforts to Ensure Just Forms of AI in Music and Education. In F. Abrahams, S. Kang, and C. Randles (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Artificial Intelligence in Music Education. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hebert, D. G., Matsunobu, K., Jakobsen, M. L., & Liu, L. (2026, in press). Issues in Accommodating the Needs and Interests of Chinese Students in Higher Music Education Worldwide. In R. Crawford & J. Southcott (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Neoliberalism and Music Education. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

JOURNAL ARTICLES:

Chen, Y. & Hebert, D. G. (2026, in press). Exploring the reception of AI-enhanced music education: A multimethod study of higher education vocal music students. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 249. https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/bcrme

Walubo, E. & Hebert, D. G. (2026). Epistemic decolonization of musical arts education: Analysis and recommendations from Uganda. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 34(1), 42-63. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/article/988395/summary 

  

 

PhD defense on Singing in Malaysia

I look forward to serving as an external examiner in April 2026 for a PhD defense at the Institute of Music, UCSI University, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This will be for Huang Yichen’s PhD in Music Performance, with a dissertation titled Schubert’s Two Wanderings: An Interpretive Approach from a Singer’s Perspective.

Huang’s dissertation systematically examines two of Franz Schubert’s famous art song cycles, Die schöne Müllerin (D. 795) and Winterreise (D. 911), using a practice-led and performer-centred approach.

It is exciting to see what is being achieved in music in Malaysia, particularly in the area of performance-based artistic research. This will be my second PhD defense at USCI University across recent months, and my third defense (as external examiner) for a Malaysian doctoral candidate across the past year, so I feel fortunate to be getting a direct sense of Malaysia’s growing importance in the music field.

While western classical art music has its roots in European heritage, there can be no doubt that across recent years many Asian countries have fully embraced this tradition with a deep appreciation that will surely be sustained long into the future.  

 

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kl-skyline-at-night-2022.jpg

 

Amsterdam: Global Philosophy of Education

I eagerly look forward to visiting Amsterdam soon as an Invited Speaker for what promises to be a unique and exciting event:

The Global Philosophy of Education Field Launching Conference (at VU Amsterdam).

This explanation is from its Call for Papers:

“This conference aims to establish the field of Global Philosophy of Education, understood as a research space and practice where central issues in philosophy of education are defined, discussed and researched jointly by philosophers working from different cultural and philosophical traditions and perspectives. This entails not the establishment of a global philosophy in the sense of a universal or hegemonic philosophical theory, but the development of a global practice of philosophy of education.”

 

Here is the abstract for the speech I have developed for this event:

 

Learning Beyond Borders: Seeking Synthesis in Global Philosophy of Education

 

Prof. David G. Hebert

Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

 

Abstract

It is common in Northern Europe for educational foundations to mostly rely on the ideas of German and Nordic thinkers from more than a century ago (e.g. Humboldt, Grundtvig, etc). Recently, countries that boldly deviate to some extent from this tradition, such as Finland, tend to attract attention for their educational innovations. Still, it seems reasonable to ask whether teacher education remains the most ethnocentric field in all of academia. In two recent books, I collaborated with colleagues from diverse cultural backgrounds to rethink philosophy of education from a comparative and decolonial perspective. One book is an anthology that aims to demonstrate the usefulness of efforts to challenge Eurocentrism and cultivate a global philosophy of education (Hebert, 2023). The other is a monograph co-authored with a Chinese scholar that aims for a synthesis between Asian philosophies, contemporary western philosophies, and systems science, to develop a novel philosophy of music education that is responsive to the new challenges from AI (Xie & Hebert, 2026). Here I will share some reflections on the processes and main ideas from these projects as well as prospects for future work. Along the way, I will demonstrate how the field of global philosophy of education has been quietly developing for some time, as seen in the work of luminary African scholars like Yusef Waghid, Indigenous (Maori) scholars like Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Carl Mika, and laudable internationalists such as Martha Nussbaum, Michael Peters and Liz Jackson. I will also outline the benefits to be gained if European universities would do more to promote cosmopolitan scholarship that stimulates pedagogical reflections beyond outdated visions of Bildung, particularly in this uniquely challenging age of AI. 

 

Link for more details: https://www.global-philosophy-of-education.com/