Held from April 1 to 3, 2026, at CELSA, the international conference « Eurovision Song Contest and Humanities and Social Sciences: Stakes, Questionings, and Perspectives » brought together around thirty researchers from fifteen different countries. At the crossroads of several disciplines, this event offered a critical analysis of emerging research in order to understand the contest in all its complexity. This major scientific event follows the seminar cycles « Thinking Eurovision » (2024–2025) and « Bringing Eurovision into Dialogue » (2025–2026). Its organization preceded by a few days the publication, on April 15, of the collective volume Comprendre l’Eurovision (MkF éditions), while its scientific richness will be showcased in a second book to be published in the spring of 2027.
The content of these academic works was structured around a central problematic: to what extent do the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) shed light on, understand, and analyze the past and current social, cultural, and political stakes of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC)? Far from being a mere kitsch or commercial event, the ESC was approached as a « total social fact, » raising varied methodological and epistemological challenges specific to HSS.
The various presentations and scientific workshops that took place during these three days anchored the intellectual foundation of the conference across several major axes:
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Geopolitics and Public Spheres: Considering the contest as a mirror of international rivalries, as well as the historical tensions of the European continent (from the Cold War to contemporary conflicts).
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Identities and Normativities: Examining how gender, territorial, and national identities are staged, while questioning the community dynamics specific to fan groups.
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Mediatization and Reception: Analyzing the different strategies of cultural and media industries, as well as the influence of popular culture in updating survey methods in HSS.
This interdisciplinarity and transculturality constitute the core of the conference, illustrating the capacity of HSS to cross-reference approaches to grasp the eclecticism and complexity of such an object of study. The discussions and interactions between participants notably highlighted the diversity of verifiable fields (ethnographies, corpora, texts, databases).
The debates and exchanges generated by the event fostered the decompartmentalization of disciplines (anthropology, information and communication sciences, political science, musicology, fan studies, gender studies, sociology), as well as the constructive confrontation of different « schools » of research. Bearing witness to a strong intercultural resonance, these exchanges confirmed the fully legitimate place of popular culture studies in the contemporary European and international academic space.
In terms of organizational and institutional perspectives, this conference marked a structuring milestone for the scientific community involved. In particular, the event served as the framework for the official launch of ENCORE (Eurovision Research Network), an international network designed to perpetuate the study of the musical, identity, political, and media challenges of the contest. Coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the contest, celebrated this year in Vienna, the creation of this network paves the way for future academic collaborations and new interdisciplinary and transnational research programs.
The organizing committee of the « Eurovision and Humanities and Social Sciences » conference would like to thank CELSA – Sorbonne Université for hosting this scientific event, as well as all its partners for their support: Initiative Europe, Faculté des Lettres – Sorbonne Université, Alliance 4EU+, the laboratories GRIPIC (Sorbonne Université), LabSIC (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord), PTAC (Université Rennes 2), and the Centre Norbert Elias (Avignon Université), as well as the LabEx ICCA.