Music, Crime, and Social Change Symposium
15 September 2025
Throughout history, music has provided individuals and social groups with more than a soundtrack to daily life, serving as an arena for self- and world-making, a platform for political expression, a means of protest and resistance, and fuel for social change.
Music has been at once recognised as a resource for social connectedness and wellbeing and as an effective method of torture.
Music has been wielded as a civilizing and colonial power, and a scaffolding for identity development and personal expression.
The sonic architecture of public spaces can enhance safety, while soundtracks of culture and community can also incite violence.
The 2025 Music, Crime, and Social Change symposium hosted by Griffith University aimed to explore these complex and multivalent associations between music and crime, bringing together isolated pockets of knowledge developing across a variety of disciplines.
Symposium Gallery
The Music, Crime, and Social Change Symposium was hosted by:
Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University
Griffith Criminology Institute (GCI) is a large, diverse and high-performing group of scholars focused on crime and justice issues. Through collaboration and innovation our research is helping find solutions to universal problems. GCI is a world leader in the criminology field and has twice achieved the highest possible ranking for research quality in the Australian Research Council Excellence in Research Assessments. Our research is distinctive in its focus on rigorous scholarship coupled with engaged translation, to achieve real world change.
Creative Arts Research Institute, Griffith University
The Creative Arts Research Institute (CARI) is a diverse community of arts-engaged researchers. Our work is connected through artistic practices; social, cultural, and environmental justice; and sensing new opportunities for imagining, making and thinking in and through the arts. CARI represents the collective voice of creative arts research at Griffith University, establishing opportunities for meaningful engagement with industry and communities, through local and international partnerships, towards a culture of excellence, rigour and risk-taking in arts-based research.
