Category: Call for Presentations

CFP: 21st International Digital Curation Conference

The 21st edition of the International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC27) will take place in Lisbon, Portugal between 9-12 February 2027.

​Call for Submissions extended for Papers and Lightning Talks!

The new deadline for papers and lightning talks are 24 July 2026.

This year we will accept submissions in five formats:

  • Papers, Lightning Talks, Posters, Demos (new to IDCC27), and Workshops

Explore the Call for Submissions and submit your proposals now. 

Conference Theme

The main theme for the conference is: FAIR DO’s: Centring People in the Stewardship and Curation of Digital Objects. The theme of this year’s conference acknowledges the crucial role of people in the work of making digital objects FAIR.

Learn more about the theme on the Conference Theme subpage.

What’s next?

  • Registration will open in late September 2026
  • The conference programme will be announced in early October 2026

About the IDCC 

The IDCC is an established annual event with a unique place in the digital curation community, reaching out to individuals, organisations and institutions across all disciplines and domains involved in curating data and providing an opportunity to get together with like-minded data practitioners to discuss policy and practice. 

Code of Conduct  

Everyone taking part in IDCC27 is expected to show respect and courtesy to others throughout their participation. Please see our full code of conduct for details of our policy. 

Follow us on LinkedIn, BlueSky and Twitter/X or subscribe to our Pipeline newsletter to be the first one to learn about IDCC27 news and updates. 

CFP: Photography, Archive, and Political Imagination (online, 23-25 Sep 26)

Deadline: Jul 15, 2026

Visual Thinking and Futures of Democracy. Photography, Archive, and Political Imagination.

7th edition of REFRAMING THE ARCHIVE: International Conference on Photography and Visual Culture.

How do images shape democratic life? Not only as records of politics, but as forces that constitute visibility, authority, and participation?
​
This conference examines photography and archival practices as contested sites where democracy is made, negotiated, and disrupted: between evidence and control, memory and exclusion, protest and institutional power.
We invite contributions from researchers, artists, and practitioners engaging with photography, archives, activism, and visual culture across historical and contemporary contexts.

KEYNOTE & GUEST SPEAKERS
DR NONI STACEY, Cultural Historian, United Kingdom
DR TOM ALLBESON, Cardiff University, United Kingdom
DR ÖZGE ÇELIKASLAN, Visual Artist, Researcher, Activist, Turkey/Germany
MARCELO BRODSKY, Visual Artist, Argentina

This conference proceeds from the premise that photography and archival visual practices do not simply document democratic life, but actively participate in the production of its conditions. Rather than treating images as representations of political reality, it approaches visual practices as sites in which subjects relations of recognition, authority, and participation are constituted and contested. Photography is thus understood not as a neutral medium of documentation, but as a dispositif through which subjects are rendered visible, legible, and governable, while simultaneously sustaining forms of civic address and political agency (Azoulay, 2008, 2019).

This ambivalence is not incidental. Since its emergence, photography has been bound to competing and often contradictory political functions: as a technology of exposure and a mechanism of control; as a means of rendering injustice visible and as an instrument in the administration of populations; as a vehicle for democratic communication and as a support for imperial, colonial, and capitalist orders. The persistent alignment of photography with accessibility, transparency, and evidentiary truth has contributed to its enduring association with democratic ideals, even as these same attributes underpin its authority within regimes of surveillance, classification, and governance (Mirzoeff, 2011, 2017).

Central to this problem is the epistemological status of the image. Photography has historically operated through an assumed equivalence between visibility and knowledge, whereby seeing is aligned with knowing and presence with recognition. This equivalence underwrites the image’s authority as evidence while obscuring the conditions of its production, circulation, and interpretation. It is precisely this instability that enables photography to function simultaneously as a site of political claim-making and as an instrument through which such claims are regulated, mediated, or foreclosed.

Within this framework, archives cannot be understood as neutral repositories of the past. They are epistemic and political infrastructures that organise what becomes historically legible, delimiting the field of visibility within which subjects and events acquire meaning. As systems of selection, classification, and preservation, archives structure the conditions under which recognition is granted or withheld, and thus play a constitutive role in the production of political reality. Their apparent function as guarantors of memory and access is inseparable from their role in stabilising authority and reproducing regimes of knowledge.

At the same time, visual practices operate within sites of conflict, dissent, and uprising. Images do not simply represent political struggle; they participate in it. They condense and transmit gestures of resistance, circulate affects, and intervene in the temporalities of political action, reactivating past struggles within present contexts (Didi-Huberman, 2016). Yet these same images are also subject to processes of capture, circulation, and institutional framing that re-inscribe them within dominant visual orders. The political force of images thus resides not in their capacity to reveal truth, but in their unstable position within competing regimes of visibility.

In recent decades, this dynamic has become particularly visible in the convergence of artistic practice and activist mobilisation. From the visual cultures of uprisings and occupations to ongoing movements such as Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, images have circulated across streets, networks, and institutions, often exceeding or displacing conventional sites of artistic display. These practices not only mobilise visual forms but reconfigure the spaces in which they operate, challenging the authority of museums, galleries, and archives while exposing their entanglement in broader political and economic structures. In this sense, activist aesthetics does not simply intervene in existing regimes of visibility, but calls into question the institutional and spatial frameworks through which such regimes are sustained.

Alongside these dynamics of conflict and contestation, recent forms of practice have foregrounded the role of participation, imagination, and collective engagement in reconfiguring democratic life. Participatory and socially engaged artistic practices increasingly operate as sites in which publics are not only represented but constituted through processes of interaction, collaboration, and shared authorship. Such practices extend beyond institutional or policy-driven models of participation, cultivating dispersed and open-ended forms of engagement that unfold across everyday spaces and mediated environments. In doing so, they contribute to the formation of a reflective and imaginative public sphere, in which alternative social and political possibilities can be articulated, negotiated, and rehearsed (Cunningham & Hammond, 2026). This shift raises the question of whether democratic transformation emerges not only through opposition to existing structures, but through the creation of new forms of collective experience and political imagination.

This instability is further intensified in contemporary conditions, where digital infrastructures and algorithmic systems reorganise the circulation, visibility, and legibility of images at scale. The promise of expanded access is entangled with new forms of extraction, surveillance, and control, raising renewed questions about the relationship between visibility, power, and democratic participation. At stake, then, is not only how images function within democratic contexts, but how particular understandings of photography have been historically bound to the very idea of democracy itself. Visual media have played a central role in shaping the terms of political recognition, in constituting and fragmenting communities, and in mediating both consensus and conflict within contemporary democratic formations (Stacey, 2020).

The conference invites contributions from researchers, scholars, visual artists, practitioners, and cultural professionals at any stage of their careers, that critically engage with photography and archives as sites in which democratic relations are produced, mediated, and contested. Particular attention is given to practice-led artistic and curatorial work, as well as collaborative and community-based projects, that engage archives and visual media as sites of intervention, reworking historical materials and visual regimes in ways that challenge dominant narratives and open alternative political imaginaries.

We welcome proposals for 15-minute theory, practice-led, and performative presentations (followed by 15-minute panel discussion) from various disciplines, including: photography, art history and theory, anthropology, museology, philosophy, cultural studies, visual and media studies, and related areas. These presentations should offer an in-depth investigation into the conference topic. Please note that the conference will be conducted in English.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following lines of inquiry:

1. ARCHIVES, POWER, AND THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
Examines how photographic archives organise regimes of visibility and historical knowledge, shaping political recognition, belonging, and exclusion.

2. COUNTER-ARCHIVES, ACTIVISM, AND PRACTICES OF REPAIR
Focuses on practices that mobilise images and archives to intervene in dominant visual orders, including reappropriation, restitution, removal, and repair.

3. REACTIVATING THE ARCHIVE: AESTHETICS, ETHICS, POLITICS
Addresses artistic and curatorial engagements that reconfigure archival materials and raise questions of authorship, ownership, and responsibility.

4. IMAGES AS EVIDENCE, IMAGES AS POLITICAL ACTION
Considers the role of images as evidentiary forms and as instruments of intervention within legal, civic, and political contexts.

5. DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES AND ALGORITHMIC VISIBILITY
Explores how digital platforms and algorithmic systems reorganisation of regimes of visibility, access, and circulation.

6. AESTHETICS, ACTIVISM, AND POLITICAL IMAGINARIES
Investigates how images operate within protest, dissent, and participatory practices, and how they contribute to the formation of collective imaginaries and forms of democratic engagement.

7. MUSEUMS, INSTITUTIONS, AND THE POLITICS OF DISPLAY
Examines how museums, galleries, and cultural institutions shape regimes of visibility and public memory through exhibitionary and curatorial practices, and how these processes are contested, reconfigured, or displaced by artistic and activist interventions.

SUBMISSION
Applications must be sent via email to info@reframingthearchive.com no later than July 15, 2026, by 11:59:00 p.m. WEST.
Applicants should submit one proposal only, in English.
Presentations have a duration of 15 minutes and should adhere to one of the following formats:

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS
Applicants are required to submit the information listed below in one PDF file:
— Author information (name, email, affiliation, ORCID)
— Paper title, abstract (300 words max), and keywords (maxi 5),
— Bibliographical references (max 5),
— Author short biographical note (written in third person, 100 words).

This information must be gathered into one PDF document with the filename saved as: FirstnameLastname-RTA2026.pdf. The applicant should indicate in the subject line: IND Application for RTA 2026 Conference.

PRE-CONSTITUTED PANELS
Submission of proposals for pre-constituted panels should consist of three papers. The corresponding candidate is required to submit a panel proposal that includes:
— Panel title and abstract (250 words)
— Information regarding the three speakers and their individual papers, as described in the guidelines for individual papers above.

​This information must be gathered into one PDF document with the filename saved as: FirstnameLastname-RTA2026.pdf. (name of the corresponding applicant)
The applicant should indicate in the subject line: PAN Application for RTA 2026 Conference.

SELECTION PROCESS
The submitted proposals will undergo a peer-review process, and candidates will be notified of the results of their proposals by September 4, 2026.
Selected speakers must confirm participation in the conference and complete registration within one week of receiving the selection notification.

PUBLICATION
Extended versions of the presented papers should be submitted for publication by 17 Oct 2026 via Archivo Papers manuscript system at http://www.archivopapers.com.
Following a double blind peer-review process, the papers will be featured​ ​in​ ​an​ ​edited​ ​volume of Archivo Papers, co-edited by Ana Catarina Pinho, Laura Singeot, and Jane Simon, to be published in 2027.

IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline​ ​for​ ​submission:​ ​Jul 15,​ ​2026
Notification​ ​of​ ​selected speakers:​ Sep 04,​ ​2026
Deadline​ ​for​ ​speakers​ ​registration:​ ​one week after confirmation of acceptance
Conference:​ ​Sept 23-25,​ ​​2026 (Online)
Manuscript submission for publication:​ ​Oct 17,​ ​​2026

Org. Committee
Dr Ana Catarina Pinho, IHA, Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal
Dr Laura Singeot, Tours University, France
Dr Jane Simon, Macquarie University, Australia

CFP: Digital Preservation 2026 – Striking a Balance – Optimizing Labor for Sustainability and Resilience (due July 1)

Conference Format and Dates

Digital Preservation 2026 will be held virtually on November 4-5, 2026.

Conference Theme: Striking a Balance: Optimizing Labor for Sustainability and Resilience

As digital preservation professionals, we are accustomed to juggling diverse tasks and balancing multiple priorities. However, recent technological and political developments have impacted our perspectives on labor and how we can best allocate resources and effort. For the 2026 NDSA Digital Preservation conference, we invite proposals that explore the ways that we approach, manage, and perform labor from multiple angles. Which tasks can we assign to software applications, and which still require human intervention? How can we leverage the potential benefits of AI tools while protecting the security and integrity of our collections and digital assets from unauthorized exploitation? Our current reality of budget cuts and hiring freezes is coupled with ever-expanding digital collections. With this reality, what are the practical limits of our capacity and potential, and how do we line those up with our visions and ideals? How can we advocate differently to secure resources that can support a resilient preservation infrastructure in the midst of humanitarian and environmental crises? How can effective programs be established in the midst of constant change? Once established, what steps can be taken to stabilize a digital preservation program and ensure its continuance? What opportunities exist for community engagement that might help navigate these emerging challenges? What opportunities can we create? What self-care strategies can digital preservation practitioners adopt to manage the demands of productivity and the stress of an ever-changing environment?

Call for Proposals

We invite presentations that relate to the conference theme. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Digital preservation and curation
  • Born-digital collections
  • Preservation metadata
  • Partnerships and consortia
  • Advocacy and outreach
  • Donor relations
  • Emotional labor and burnout
  • Project management
  • Change management
  • Contingency planning
  • Staff management
  • AI and machine learning in digital preservation
  • Workflows
  • Digital preservation tools
  • Copyright and privacy issues

Submission Information

Submission length and format

  • 5-minute lightning talks
  • 15-minute talks or demos. Talks will be grouped into panels of three presentations on a similar theme with a shared 15-minute question and answer period for the hour-long session.
  • 25-minute talks or demos. Talks will be grouped into panels of two presentations on a similar theme with a shared 10-minute question and answer period for the hour-long session.

Submission Requirements

  • Proposal title
  • First and last names, organizational affiliations, and email addresses for all authors / presenters
  • Abstract (50 words max)
  • Proposal (250 words)
  • All submissions are under a CC-BY 4.0 license, which allows for sharing and adaptation of content but requires appropriate credit and an indication of any changes made by others. Presenters must agree to share their work under this license in the submission form. After DigiPres 2026, works will be uploaded to NDSA’s YouTube channel and made available for viewing.

Evaluation Criteria

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by NDSA’s Digital Preservation 2026 Program Committee. The DigiPres Planning Committee will give strong preference to programming that is fully inclusive and reflects a wide range of expression and identity. When evaluating proposals, the Planning Committee will:

  • Consider the contribution of the submission to the overall conference program,
  • Recommend the proposal on a scale of 1-5 whether to reject or accept the proposal, and
  • Rate their familiarity with the proposal topic on a scale of 1-5 (1 being completely new, 5 being very familiar).
  • They may recommend the proposal for presentation as a lightning talk.

Submit your Proposal

Submit your proposal now. The submission deadline is July 1, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time.

Presenters will be notified of their acceptance starting in late July. All presentations must be recorded for playback during the conference. Presenters should be available for a live question and answer period during the scheduled session time. Presenters will receive support in the form of tutorials, resources, and individual assistance.

Note: All conference attendees are expected to abide by the NDSA Code of Conduct, and proposals should be submitted in the spirit of NDSA’s Values and Principles.

Questions?

Feel free to reach out to ndsa.digipres@gmail.com and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

About the NDSA and Digital Preservation Virtual 2026

NDSA is a consortium of over 275 organizations committed to the long-term preservation and stewardship of digital information and cultural heritage. Digital Preservation 2026 is the conference hosted by NDSA. Open to members and non-members alike, it highlights the theory and practice of digital stewardship and preservation, data curation, the digital object lifecycle, and related issues.

CFP: Thinking through Heirlooms (6th Nov 2026, University of Brighton)

Keynote Speaker: Prof Soumhya Venkatesan with Lydia Donohue (University of Manchester)

The word ‘heirloom’ evokes objects tucked away in wardrobes, imbued with woody, musty fragrance, aged with patina and eerie silence – rescued, retained, preserved, and remembered. Their fate remains unpredictable: second-hand stores, antique shops, auction houses, museum collections. Heirlooms chart different trajectories with different owners, soaked in different personalities, carrying a panoply of histories imposed by each owner. As objects moving between generations, heirlooms accrue, embody, and elicit multiple meanings, holding both personal and cultural relevance and developing their own life histories. Around this central object, scholars have explored postmemory, kinship, hidden heirlooms, space and homes, memorial samples, family archives, home cultures, migration, and industrial heritage. Not restricted to physical objects alone – what about the intangible? What if the heirloom no longer exists, resulting in ‘oral heirlooms’ (Ajit, 2015) or the passing of skill as inheritance?

This symposium unravels such complexities by examining alternative ways of listening and reading heirlooms, deconstructing established ideas of what an heirloom is, and unlocking new knowledge embedded within them. The symposium follows three themes:

1.     Person-Object Relationships: Laden with emotional weight, heirlooms share tenuous relationships with owner identity, invoking unique ‘person-object’ relationships (McCracken, 1988), suggesting multiple ways relations are articulated through things. Lying at the intersection of objects, people, and relationships, heirlooms reinforce the central role artefacts play in understanding culture and society, with materials and materiality serving as conduits for these relationships. One may also examine the making process of an heirloom, its crafting and craftsmanship, with materials ranging from metal, ceramic, wood, textiles, paper, and plastic, taking forms including pottery, decorative arts, needlework, clothing, photographs, furniture and furnishings, ornaments, musical instruments, recipes, letters, and diaries.

2.     Transference and Transactions: While heirlooms and intergenerationality are often intertwined, non-linear passing is not uncommon. Bequeathing may not always be from older to younger; heirlooms are sometimes passed before death, making one an ‘unprepared custodian’ (Dimmock, 2025). This theme subverts dominant ways of receiving heirlooms and the spaces they occupy, including archives and museum collections. Heirlooms do not always follow patrilineal lineage; thus, questions of hierarchy, value, and significance emerge. Further, not all heirlooms are held with importance; they are forgotten or misremembered. Such heirlooms matter too, inextricably connected to ways of remembering: material memory, cultural memory, and sensory memory.

3.     The New Heirlooms: Can heirlooms be chosen? What happens when one is left without ancestors, resulting in non-consanguineous heirlooms? What if heirlooms are intentional, specifically created? In crafting new heirlooms, what role can designers play in creating timeless, durable objects for longevity, encouraging custodianship through embedding memory? With rising eco-consciousness, what all do digital heirlooms entail (Giaccardi et al., 2012)? This theme engages with tensions and contradictions in the digital humanities, sustainability studies, and technology heirlooms – electronic artefacts, online memorialization and social media. How can we speculate imaginative futures around care and heirlooms, including exploring heirlooms as educational tools to foster better relationships?

We encourage submissions from design history, textile studies, design anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, museum studies, design research, archive studies, oral history, feminist studies, material culture, and beyond. We welcome encounters with heirlooms: theoretical and object-based studies, personal reflections and artistic explorations across media. We especially encourage submissions from affiliated and unaffiliated scholars, including graduate students, early career researchers, artists, independent researchers, designers, and practitioners.

Please send your proposals for a 15-minute presentation or a 5–10-minute video or performance as a 300–400-word abstract, by submitting on the form below, before 3rd July 2026. We will respond to all the submissions with a decision by the end of July. We aim to publish the knowledge and discussions that emerge from this symposium as a volume by a renowned publisher, subject to confirmation. If you have any questions or wish to discuss the submission in alternative formats, please do not hesitate to write to either of us.

Submission Link: CFP – Thinking Through Heirlooms: An Interdisciplinary Symposium (6th Nov 2026) – Fill out form

References

  • Ajit, A. (2015). Oral Heirlooms: The Vocalisation of Loss and Objects. Oral History, 70–78.
  • Dimmock, K. (2025). What Do I Do with all This Stuff? Inheritance and the Unprepared Custodian: Relating Meaning Through the Mediated Artistic Collection (Doctoral dissertation, Open Research Newcastle).
  • Giaccardi, E., Churchill, E., & Liu, S. (2012). Heritage Matters: Designing for Current and Future Values Through Digital and Social Technologies. In CHI’12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2783–2786.
  • McCracken, G. (1990). Culture and Consumption. Indian University Press.

Contact Information

Symposium Organisers: 

Pragya Sharma (University of Brighton, UK)

p.sharma6@uni.brighton.ac.uk

Prof Saumya Pande (Slow Stitch Foundation, India)

pandesaumya17@gmail.com

Contact Email

PRAGYA.SHARMA57@GMAIL.COM

Attachments

Full Call for Papers

CFP: “The Architect Beyond the Building: Design and the Decorative Arts” ICOM-DESIGN Annual Conference, Barcelona, due date 30 June 2026

The Architect Beyond the Building: Design and the Decorative Arts  

Host institution: Museu Nacional D’Art Catalunya (MNAC)

CFP Due: 30 June 2026; notification of acceptance: 15 July 2026

Conference Dates: 11–12 November 2026 (Conference); 13–14 November November 2026 (Post-Conference Tour)

In 2026 Barcelona has been designated the World Capital of Architecture and  commemorates the anniversary of the death of the architect Antoni Gaudí, whose  imprint has shaped the city and its Mediterranean identity. 

Within this context, the 2026 annual meeting of ICOM DESIGN, to be held at the  Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC), focuses on the figure of the architect  beyond the traditional role associated with architectural and urban projects. The  conference will revolve around architectural practice through the lens of design,  craftsmanship, and the intimate scale. 

This call invites papers that examine the wide range of outputs that architects  contribute to as part of, or outside of, building projects, including: furniture, glass,  lacquer, ceramics, jewellery, and goldsmithing; fashion and textiles; as well as graphic  design, mural painting, muséographie, and atmosphere, while also addressing the  fields of interior design and architectural ornamentation.  

We welcome submissions that explore these multidisciplinary practices beyond the  large scale, addressing projects, creative processes, and cultural influences from the  Middle Ages to the present day and across the globe.  

Could the intimate scale of design be the true space in which an architect’s identity is  manifested? What does an architect bring to the design of smaller scale objects or  interiors that makes their practice unique? How, in which historical contexts and for  which audiences have architects employed traditional techniques and crafts to enrich  sensorial experience? What are the challenges in conservation, exhibition, and  restoration of this heritage? What intimate stories are behind the creation of the  designs? How do architects use design as a bridge to imagine and construct other  possible worlds or to create playful and imaginative works?  

Proposals offering critical perspectives may consider (but are not limited to) the  following themes: 

– Architecture, a home for the total arts 

– Design and architectural photography 

– Material practices and intimate craft 

– Identity and gender 

– Heritage, conservation and collections

– Microarchitectures 

– Visionary, utopian, and playful creations 

– Sustainability, circularity, and materials 

This international congress aims to gather a limited number of contributions,  representing original studies and intended to foster discussion at the intersection of  academic and curatorial scholarship and professional practice.  

Why MNAC? 

The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC), in Barcelona is an ideal site for this  productive dialogue, as an institution dedicated to all artistic disciplines from the  Romanesque period to the twenty-first century, and it houses a unique collection of  decorative arts by architects such as Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol, artists who  pushed the boundaries. 

The museum is entering a new phase marked by an ambitious expansion project at the  Palau Victoria Eugènia, scheduled for completion in 2029 to coincide with the  centenary of the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. This expansion will further  strengthen the Museum’s role as an institution without chronological or stylistic  boundaries, capable of representing and promoting the full scope of Catalan artistic  production.  

The ICOM DESIGN meeting in Barcelona proposes a rich programme of visits to  significant historical sites and museums throughout the city and its surroundings, while  engaging with contemporary collections and makers. 

How do I apply?  

– Abstract of 300-400 words 

– Short Resume or CV 

– Submit to icom-design-2026@museunacional.cat by June 30th. – Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2026  

– Post-conference tour: 13–14 November 2026 

Participants will be expected to give their presentations in English, which should last 15  minutes and include a visual presentation component. Proposals will be peer reviewed  and the results of the conference may be published. 

Presenters will be expected to cover their own registration and travel expenses. Travel  grants for young ICOM members (under 40 years old) will be available. Information will  follow for those applications.  

Membership requirements 

Please note that all participants must be individual members or representatives of  institutional members of ICOM DESIGN at the time of the conference. 

Find more information about how to become a member of ICOM and ICOM-DESIGN  here: https://icom.museum/en/get-involved

Contact Email

icom-design-2026@museunacional.cat

URL

https://icom-icdad.org/call-for-papers-annual-conference-barcelona-2026

CFP: British Records Association 2026 conference ‘All Mapped Out: Maps, Plans and Charts in the Archives’

BRA Conference 2026: Call for Papers

British Records Association conference 2026: ‘All Mapped Out: Maps, Plans and Charts in the Archives’

Date:       Tuesday 24th November 2026

Location: The Gallery, 77 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6EJ

Call for papers: abstracts submission deadline 5pm on Wednesday 1st July 2026

This year the British Records Association (BRA) annual conference will be held on the topic of records and archives which take the form of maps or geographical plans and charts. 

Submissions are invited which link this theme to the aims of the BRA, namely the preservation, understanding, accessibility and study of our recorded heritage for public benefit. Areas to be explored could include:

  • challenges of preserving maps owing to their scale or format
  • survival or absence of significant maps, or collections thereof
  • little known material, whether significant for design or purpose, for example
  • misleading maps
  • different reasons why maps have been produced
  • interesting discoveries or interpretations based on the study of maps
  • maps as a tool for public engagement
  • broadening access through digitisation, grant funded projects, or other means
  • relevant collaborations, such as between historians and collections managers
  • changes in how maps have been created, and insights these provide, such as the rise of digital cartography
  • whether existing map collections are under threat from technological advances

Abstracts of papers (twenty minutes) or lightning talks as part of a panel (five minutes) should be a maximum of 200 words and should be accompanied by a biography of all participants of up to 150 words. These should be submitted to the BRA Chair:  chair@britishrecordsassociation.org.uk

The British Records Association is a charity which aims to promote the preservation, understanding, accessibility and study of our recorded heritage for public benefit. It is open to anyone interested in records and archives whether local historians, academics, professional archivists, or custodians and owners of collections, or simply those who are curious about the record of our past. http://www.britishrecordsassociation.org.uk/

Matti Watton, BRA Chair, on behalf of the conference organising committee.

Contact Information

BRA Chair

Contact Email

chair@britishrecordsassociation.org.uk

URL https://www.britishrecordsassociation.org.uk/news/call-for-papers-for-our-2026-conference/

CFP: The Black Press at 200

“The Black Press at 200,” which will be held March 17–18, 2027 at Howard University in conjunction with the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, home of the Black Press Archives. This free two-day symposium commemorates 200 years of Black journalism and examines the enduring significance of the Black Press as “one of the most vital and enduring institutions in American public life.” The symposium will convene scholars, journalists, archivists, artists, students, and community researchers to explore the historical legacies, contemporary practices, and futures of Black journalism.

Symposium schedule and deadline:

  • Abstract Submission Deadline: September 18, 2026
  • Notification of Acceptance: October 30, 2026
  • Symposium Dates: March 17–18, 2027 at Howard University

This conference particularly encourage submissions from graduate students, early-career scholars, community scholars, independent researchers, and practitioners whose work engages Black journalism, Black intellectual history, media studies, African American history, diaspora studies, archives, digital humanities, and related fields.

Contact Information

Questions and submissions for the conference may be directed to:

Michael Guy
mguy@blackpressresearchcollective.org

Contact Email

mguy@blackpressresearchcollective.org

URL

https://msrc.howard.edu

CFP: Black Journalism in Global Perspective: Intellectual Exchange Across the Diaspora

“Black Journalism in Global Perspective: Intellectual Exchange Across the Diaspora,” is a collaborative workshop co-sponsored by the African American Intellectual History Society and the Black Press Research Collective. The workshop will take place at Brown University on October 15–16, 2026 and is designed for early-career scholars and ABD graduate students working on themes related to the Global Black Press. The workshop seeks to rethink the Black Press “not simply as a historical institution, but as a dynamic space of global Black thought,” with particular attention to transnational exchange, intellectual production, and the cultural work of journalism across the African diaspora. Selected participants will have opportunities for publication in Black Perspectives and Global Black Thought.

These are the submission details and timeline for the workshop:

  • Expression of Interest / Abstract Deadline: July 1, 2026
  • Notification of Acceptance: August 1, 2026
  • Workshop Dates: October 15–16, 2026 at Brown University

This call encourages submissions from graduate students, early-career scholars, community scholars, independent researchers, and practitioners whose work engages Black journalism, Black intellectual history, media studies, African American history, diaspora studies, archives, digital humanities, and related fields.

Contact Information

Questions and submissions for the workshop may be directed to:

Michael Guy

mguy@blackpressresearchcollective.org

Contact Email

mguy@blackpressresearchcollective.org

CFP: Ephemera Society of America 2027 Conference

Ephemera Marks the Day: Holidays & Celebrations

Request for Presentations:

Holidays and celebrations give us a chance to take a break from our regular schedules and focus on something special. They can mark or commemorate historically significant events, such as Independence Day, Juneteenth, or Memorial Day. They may mark a holiday, religious or otherwise, like Christmas, Mardi Gras, Halloween or Mother’s Day. Celebrations may also be held for personal events, such as a birthday, wedding anniversary, religious confirmation or graduation.  And increasingly, a plethora of national days have been promoted by industry or interest groups, some of which have been instituted through government resolution. Earth Day (an international observance) is more serious in nature. National Peanut Butter Day, Sibling Day, or Hug an Australian Day are more light-hearted. Almost every holiday has its “trappings,” many of which take the form of ephemera. And the look of these trappings evolves over time and can vary significantly according to culture or region.

Ephemera 47, the Ephemera Society of America (ESA) annual conference, will take place at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich, Connecticut, on Friday, March 19, 2027. Each speaker will address a topic related to a celebration or holiday, relying heavily on tangible ephemera—invitations, decorations, posters, advertisements, greeting cards, tickets, brochures, menus, trade cards, broadsides, receipts, souvenirs, correspondence, itineraries, photographs, postcards, maps, diaries—to illustrate their subject. Keep in mind that our focus is not just the images of your chosen subject but the story of your subject, its significance, how it is celebrated and how it evolved over time. 

Each presentation will be 30 minutes in length, followed by a brief Q&A. Please submit the following:

·         Presentation title and a written abstract, focusing on the way ephemera tells the story of your chosen topic. Please describe the specific types of ephemera you will use to illustrate your topic. Each presentation needs to feature at least three different types of ephemera. Proposals should not exceed 150 words.

·         5 to 6 representative ephemera images

·         Single-paragraph biography, including any affiliations

·         A .jpg photograph of yourself for publicity purposes

·         Mailing address, phone number and e-mail address

Following a review of all proposals, finalists may be asked to submit 10 to 15 images of the types of ephemera that will be used to illustrate their talk. Proposals must be submitted via e-mail or post by September 15, 2026 to Barbara Loe, Ephemera 47 Conference Chair.

e-mail: bjloe@earthlink.net 

post:      Ephemera Society of America, Inc., P.O. Box 95, Cazenovia, NY 13035-0095.

Decisions and notification about proposals will be made by November 30, 2026. Presenters will be requested to sign a release at the time of acceptance allowing their presentation to be filmed for use by the ESA.

If selected, a draft PowerPoint presentation must be submitted by February 28, 2027. The final presentation must be submitted by March 12, 2027. Presentations must include 25 or more ephemera images. At this time, funding is not available from ESA to support travel or presentation costs. 

ESA is eager to expand the use of ephemera in the classroom, and we encourage presentations on all subjects addressing the use of ephemera in teaching and academic research. We encourage undergraduate and graduate students to submit proposals for the Emerging Scholars Program to be held on Thursday afternoon, March 18th.  For more information, please see “Emerging Scholars” under the “Discover” tab on our website:  www.ephemerasociety.org

CfP: Practicing the Archival Commons: Publics, Power and Perspectives (STIAS Feb 2027) deadline 5 JUNE 2026

This workshop seeks to examine refigured archiving work currently undertaken in Africa as well as to learn more about the ways in which this refigures scholarship. Introducing the concept of the ‘archival commons’, it particularly aims at studying diverse forms of archiving as common, communal or communing practices that have significant effects on both preservation and critical historical work.

Practicing the Archival Commons: Publics, Power and Perspectives

In 2002, scholars and archival practitioners, mainly thinking from and working in South Africa, published Refiguring the Archive amidst the transformative imperative against apartheid and the colonial past. The book’s authors argued that archival conceptualization, practice and use all “required transformation” (Hamilton et al. 2002, 7). The publication turns our attention to the convergence of a range of developments in the twenty-first century including a broader archival turn across academic disciplines, a transnational professional reexamination of archival praxis, the rapid expansion and acceleration of digital technologies, and public demands to address the past and its discontents.

Against this backdrop, this workshop seeks to examine refigured archiving work currently undertaken in Africa as well as to learn more about the ways in which this refigures scholarship. Introducing the concept of the ‘archival commons’, it particularly aims at studying diverse forms of archiving as common, communal or communing practices that have significant effects on both preservation and critical historical work. Rooted in the broader notion of commons as shared cultural, informational, and natural resources, the ‘archival commons’ contrast an understanding of archives as static, institutionally controlled spaces. The concept aligns with decolonial and liberatory approaches by envisioning archives as dynamic, participatory spaces governed collectively by archivists, researchers, and communities.

The goals of the workshop are twofold. First, the workshop aims to assess the making, workings, functioning, and meanings of archives which accentuate cooperation and reciprocity on the one hand and work towards greater justice, if not compensation, for past injustices or practices of silencing on the other. Second, acknowledging that archives are characterized by practices and their aliveness, it aims to study the affordances and limitations of common-based approaches to archiving for history and other academic disciplines and to explore their implications for research methodologies more generally. To meet these objectives, the workshop is planned as an event that includes both practical and theoretical elements and reflections. On the one hand, it is comprised of visits to, and active engagement with, archival projects in and around Stellenbosch University and from other parts of the African continent. On the other hand, it invites researchers, especially early in their careers, and practitioners in history, archival studies, heritage, postcolonial studies and anthropology to think of the ‘archival commons’ together and investigate it as a way of engaging the past. Therefore, we invite proposals for papers that address the ‘archival commons’ with reference to one or more of the following themes and questions:

Publics

– How does archiving as a common, communal or communing practice contribute to transformative discourses and which publics are involved? What are the roles of trained archivists and professional identities in this context?
– What social and cultural work is performed by the ‘archival commons’ in general and by specific archival projects in particular? How can/do/should scholars consider this in their engagement with such projects?
– What do the ‘’archival commons’ create? Who makes, sustains and takes care of them? Which (digital) infrastructures do they need? How do digital infrastructures enable or limit their possibilities?
– How do or can the ‘archival commons’ or specific common archival initiatives contribute to refiguring social, economic, political, environmental and digital relations?

Power

– How does power operate in the ‘archival commons’? In how far does the ‘archival commons’ constitute a possibility to reconsider power relations in current archival practice?
– What renders archival labor visible or invisible? How do practitioners preserve their archival work in precarious conditions? How do they refigure archival practices such as selection, description, preservation, and access considering critiques of archival conventions?
– How do archival practitioners engage with digitization and the new conventions, challenges, (in)equalities and possibilities it brings about?
– How do archival projects deal with difference, conflict and difficult histories? Considering that archiving documents involves more than ‘simply’ preserving them –by adding value through appraisal, processing, description and – how is value created and maintained?
– What cooperations and disjunctures have formed between archival professionals, researchers, and ‘subjects’?

Perspectives

– Which epistemological and social perspectives have been, are being or could be opened by archival projects in the twenty-first century?
– How does common archiving impact knowledge production and in which societal fields? How does it impact research practices and methodologies?
– What material conditions, relationships and understandings are needed or desired to practice and sustain the ‘archival commons’ as a socially responsible and epistemologically meaningful project?

Please send a proposal of no more than 300 words and a one-page CV by June 5, 2026 to archivalcommonsworkshop@gmail.com. Participants will be notified by the end of August 2026. The workshop will be held in English and focus on the discussion of pre-circulated papers of about 3,000 words (submission due by December 15, 2026). In case of submissions with more than one author, we will only be able to accommodate one person per proposal due to budgetary restrictions. Please indicate in your proposal who should be considered as the main applicant.

The workshop is organized in the framework of the “Programme Point Sud” of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and Goethe University Frankfurt. Costs for travel and accom-modation will be covered.

Contact Email

archivalcommonsworkshop@gmail.com