Norma Coates elected president of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music – U.S. Chapter

Associate professor Norma Coates has been elected president of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music – U.S. Chapter (IASPM US). Professor Coates, who is jointly appointed to the Don Wright Faculty of Music and Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western, begins her two-year term as president in May 2021.

IASPM-US is an interdisciplinary and inter-professional organization that represents the United States branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Through its annual meetings, its quarterly publication the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and its website, IASPM-US promotes a range of scholarly and other approaches to the study of popular music.

Dr. Coates' research interests include popular music and identity, and historical popular music television. Her journal and anthologized articles on both topics circulate and are taught internationally.

She first attended a IASPM-US meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 23 years ago while she was graduate school. Since then, Coates has served in several executive and committee chair roles, and was also an associate editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies in the mid-2000s.