IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER:

Deadline for Submissions: August 15^th, 2022.
Notification of Acceptance: September 15^th, 2022.
Conference Dates: 10^th, 11^th and 12^th October, 2022.

In conversations about voices that often go unheard and are erased from global histories and knowledge of bodies and being, we, a group of cross-disciplinary PhD students from the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen have come together to plan this cross-disciplinary event and platform – Postcolonial Fault-lines: Branching into the Unknown. This conference aims to prioritize and showcase these voices while tackling the practices of exclusion and assimilation within academia and beyond. As extremist politics perpetuating violence and hatred towards marginalised communities continue to rise across the world, we want to increase focus on the multitude of ways the structures of power and control operate and function on a global scale. Moving beyond a single-axis lens of reading and representation, we want to build upon a fluctuating intersectional framework, which works with the constantly evolving matrices of individual and collective identities.

With this in mind, we want to address or engage with the following questions during this conference: what are the unexplored terrains of knowledge, bodies, and beings within the postcolonial landscape, and how do we branch out within the field to build a heterogeneous and complex framework of research? How do we, as researchers and people, create a self-reflective reading process which acknowledges the loss of stability and the creation of discomfort? We hope that engaging with these questions and opening up conversations about transnational solidarity and resistance practices will help us move beyond established Anglo- and Euro-centric understandings of lived experience, political and aesthetic practices, and ways of living and being.

With the belief that our foundations as we know and inhabit them are fractured within different temporal-spatial contexts, we believe that it is crucial to embrace cross-disciplinary outlooks and re-interrogate knowledge production and dissemination to build more inclusive, intersectional and sustainable frameworks of reading, representation and research. Hence, we are open to every form of research and creative knowledge practice as a form of presentation for this conference since we see it as a safe and sustainable space for knowledge sharing/exchange and solidarity-building through these presentations and conversations. This conference seeks to elucidate and further practices of bridging the gaps between art, academia and activism and showcase the interconnected nature of the three in our everyday lived and research experiences.

We, therefore, want to invite postgraduate research students in all academic disciplines to think about how their research or subject area stands concerning these issues. We also welcome submissions by early-career researchers who have finished their PhD in the past three years. We aim to be as inclusive as possible; we want to encourage collaboration and interdisciplinary exchange between the arts and humanities, social and life sciences, and STEM subjects. Hopefully, with our continued efforts, through this conference, we all will be able to contribute to “evolving ethics and methodologies that seek to build dialogues across locations” (Richa Nagar 2014).

PROPOSAL TOPICS MIGHT INCLUDE (but are not limited to):

• Climate Change and the Environment; the Anthropocene; (post/neo)colonial ecologies;
• Mobility, migration, refugees, and diaspora;
• Hunger and Crisis; Food safety; Privatisation and protest;
• Gender, Sexuality, and Sexualisation; reproductive politics;
• Politics and Dynamics of Identity and Power: Caste; Race; Colour; Ethnicity
• Temporal-spatial production: location; age; culture; tradition; geopolitics
• Capital, Class and Social Reproduction: Combined and Uneven Development
• Imprisonment; exile; sedition; carcerality; sanctions; siege
• Corporeality; onto-epistemology; the self and the other;
• Borders and Boundaries; movements and solidarities; contact zones
• Decolonisation politics: within academia theory and praxis, knowledge production and proliferation, institutional hierarchical formations;
• Difference and Representation; ways of living, being and seeing;
• Intersectionality; activist-knowledge work; ethics of research and fieldwork;
• Marginalisation – Politics of Erasure, Assimilation and Elimination;
• Resistance and Recovery; Reimagination, Negotiation, Navigation and Survival;
• (ethno)Nationalism; nationalism; citizenship; belonging; hybridity;
• Trauma – Documentation, Recovery and Rehabilitation;
• Lived Experience and Testimony; oral history; (auto)ethnography
• Health – mental, physical, emotional; disabilities – visible and invisible;
• Transnational Politics and Poetics; creative and aesthetic practices;
• Fault-lines, Fissures, Peripheries and the Unknown

WAYS TO PARTICIPATE:

• 20 min presentation
• 5-10 min short presentation
• Alternative sessions | Creative presentations – poetry, prose, art, among others.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Submit an abstract for a 20-minute paper: these submissions will be sorted thematically into three-paper panels after acceptance.

Submit an abstract for a 10-minute presentation: to encourage participation from early postgraduate research students, we would like to offer room for short (5-to-10-minute) presentations where you might give an overview of your research, present a research proposal, fieldwork activity, carry out a short analysis of a text or artwork, or explain a concept of importance or new approach to your work. This is an opportunity to gain conference experience in the early stages of your research. Please note that early-stage postgraduate research students are not limited to this option and are welcome to propose a paper or alternative session/workshop.

Submit a proposal for an alternative session | creative presentation: we would like to encourage proposals for alternative sessions and creative presentations. This may include, for example, practice-based research showcases consisting of a short performance or audio/visual presentation, creative outputs, or workshops addressing specific issues and/or texts (in the broadest sense of the word). Please include as much detail as possible in your application, explaining your time and technology requirements. When proposing your alternative session or workshop, please keep in mind that we plan to host this conference on Zoom. If other technology/software is required, this should be accessible and fairly user-friendly. If you have any ideas for proposals and you are not sure if they fit within these technical restrictions, please get in touch.

If interested in participating, please email: postcolonialfaultlines22@glasgow.ac.uk with a short bio (around 100 words), including institutional affiliation, and a proposal of 300 words maximum. Please specify in your application which style of presentation you intend to give and submit your proposal as either a Word or PDF document. General enquiries can also be sent to this email address.

Website: https://postcolonialfaultlines.wordpress.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/po_cofaultlines