“Critical Perspectives on Settler Colonialism: Space, Memory, and Everyday Life”
November 19-20, 2022
Birzeit University, Palestine
*Extended date for abstract submission: 20th of June 2022
Call for Submission of Abstracts
The Second International Conference of Graduate Students in the Social Sciences is organized by students of the PhD program in Social Sciences at Birzeit University, Palestine. The conference provides a diverse international platform for knowledge exchange and scholarly engagement bringing together graduate students located at Universities across the world, with a special emphasis on promoting south-south student dialogue. This conference will focus on multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives that engage various dimensions of contemporary studies of settler colonialism with a focus on three main themes: space and place; time, temporality and memory; and experiences and potentialities of the everyday.
The two-day conference aims to diversify dominant scholarly approaches to the specificity of settler colonialism, as well as open up space for new thinking around issues of de-colonial and anticolonial knowledge and practice. In particular the Conference is interested in addressing forms of everyday negotiation, confrontation, and tools of resistance that may cast light on what it means to live under a settler colonial system and extend our understanding of the ways in which to confront it. Accordingly, we seek research papers that cast light towards developing new critical analytics, concepts, tools and methodologies in ways that complicate our understanding of the temporal and spatial dynamics of settler colonial processes and lived experiences of colonization. The conference also seeks to extend the dialogue about the role of social science knowledge production and research as they have developed from the different locations of colonial experiences and contexts -- past and present. Ultimately the Conference asks - how might we build an alternative vision that bridges past experiences, current realities and imagined futures?
We are seeking conference paper abstracts under the following five sub-themes:
Space, Place and settler colonialism: the spatialization of colonial power; experiences of structural and spatial violence; narratives of place; relationalities to land; bodies, borders – recognition and sovereignties.
Indigenous knowledge: Indigenous knowledge as methodology, tools of decolonization in indigenous experience; solidarities and political alternatives.
Everyday life under colonialisms: the changing semantics and semiotics of everyday life; strategies, tactics and survival; contested meanings - negotiation, steadfastness, and tools of adaptation.
Temporality/Memory and colonialism: temporalities and colonial processes and experiences; memory,commemoration and mnemonic practices; media and memory; the politics of museums, archives, heritage and cultural preservation; colonialism and sensory memory; futurity.
Knowledge as tool of resistance: practices of critical knowledge; emancipatory education; educational curricula; social media as alternative sites of solidarities and resistance.
Deadline for Abstracts
Interested persons are requested to submit abstracts of their research papers with a maximum of 500 words in Arabic or English no later than 20th of June 2022 to the email IGSC.PhD@birzeit.edu
Conference Applicants
Should be PhD students at any stage of their training or research (pre-graduation) in any discipline of the Social Sciences. Please enclose with your application a CV and one paragraph biographythat also specifies if you want to attend the Conference physically or virtually and whether you will be in need of financial aid in order to attend.
Applicants will be informed of the decision of the Conference Committee by mid-July/ July 2022, while draft papers are due October 1, 2022.
Conference Format
The two-day Conference will be held in a hybrid format to enable participants who face travel restrictions to attend.
Conference Language
Arabic and English will be the two languages (and abstracts and papers) . Simultaneous translation will be provided at the Conference.
Financial Aid
A number of full and partial travel and accommodation grants are available for overseas participants. On having an abstract accepted, applicants wishing to receive financial aid will be required to provide the necessary documents and fill an application form – as well as provide an estimated cost of travel expenses. Participants who receive support will be received and accommodated in local hotels.
Conference Registration
All participants are required to register for the conference. Registration covers lunches and coffee breaks during the conference – registration is free.
For further details about the conference, please do not hesitate to email IGSC.PhD@birzeit.edu