Category: Call for Presentations

CFP: Medieval Manuscripts in North America, and How They Got Here

The Peripheral Manuscripts Project and Digital Scriptorium have joined forces to organize the following session at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, to be held May 14-16, 2026, in Kalamazoo, MI, and we are looking for submissions!

Medieval Manuscripts in North America, and How They Got Here

Recent regional digitization and description initiatives and national cataloguing efforts have increased the discoverability of medieval manuscript holdings in North American collections. Such projects have made more–and better–data about such manuscripts available, revealing complex histories of manuscript circulation on this continent. This session invites papers that explore the provenance histories of these items or collections and how those histories have shaped manuscript research in the US and Canada over the past century. We also welcome papers that present histories of rare book dealers and/or auction houses or that trace the collecting habits of individuals or institutions in North America.

Abstracts are due by September 15, 2025, and can be submitted here.

Questions can be directed to Elizabeth Hebbard (ehebbard@iu.edu), Sarah Noonan (snoonan@saintmarys.edu), and/or Lynn Ransom (lransom@upenn.edu)

Call for Papers: Oral Histories with the Dead

Virtual Symposium
“Oral Histories with the Dead: Cemeteries, Communities, and Haunting Stories”
February 13, 2026 (Online)
Organized by Naomi Frost and Anna Sheftel, Concordia University

Oral Histories with the Dead will be an intimate, one-day symposium exploring how oral historians from various backgrounds are working to understand the past and the present through cemeteries and burial spaces. We are seeking paper proposals from community or academic oral historians at all career levels who have engaged with cemeteries and burial sites, whether official or unofficial, and their evolving meanings in the present, through the practice of oral history. Oral history generally focuses on the life stories and experiences of the living: how do these stories connect us to the dead? Can we listen to the dead? How can the practice of listening help us to understand the role of these spaces and those buried there, in understanding the past, our present, and questions of inequality and injustice? How does oral history of cemeteries and burial sites require engagement with silence and forgetting?

While there has been considerable scholarly and community interest in cemeteries and burial sites in recent years, particularly in situations of violence and oppression, much of the focus has been on archeological and related methods. The hope of this symposium is to bring together people trying to make sense of these spaces through story. While cemetery oral history may seem like a niche topic, we argue that it gets to the heart of many of the major themes that preoccupy oral historians: questions of place, belonging, silences, and power. Oral histories can interrogate how cemeteries, and the permanence that comes from burial, can teach us about who is and is not allowed to be visible, who is remembered and who is forgotten. These questions are especially salient in the case of cemeteries of marginalized or historically underrepresented communities, as well as in stories of migration, where burial often connects to questions about diasporic identity and belonging.

This symposium will explore how innovative approaches to listening and oral history help us to “speak” with or “listen” to the dead and the spaces we make for them. We welcome proposals grounded in oral history and storytelling, community and scholarly research, or creative practice, that consider what listening to cemeteries can reveal about the past and how they shape our understandings of the present.

In order to welcome proposals from a range of geographical and cultural settings, and from presenters with a range of disciplinary backgrounds, this symposium will be hosted remotely via Zoom on February 13, 2026. The hope is to work towards a collective publication afterwards. 

To submit your proposal for a presentation, please email us at naomi.frost@concordia.ca and anna.sheftel@concordia.ca and include the following documents: an abstract that addresses how your work engages with the themes of the symposium (up to 300 words); and a short bio (up to 100 words).

The deadline for submissions is: September 30, 2025.

Contact Information

Naomi Frost and Anna Sheftel, Concordia University

Contact Email

anna.sheftel@concordia.ca

URL

https://bit.ly/4mhTBOs

CFP: The Work of Revolution, First Joint Conference of NCPH and AASLH

The National Council on Public History (NCPH) and American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) are excited to announce that the Call for Proposals for our first joint conference is now live, with final proposals due December 1, 2025. 

“The Work of Revolution”

Revolution is at the center of every remarkable societal change. Through formal politics, grassroots organizing, boycott, protest, litigation, war, and a wide range of other mass and individual actions, behind every revolutionary moment are the people working to bring revolutionary ideas into reality. In the face of rapid cultural, social, political, and technological change, history’s importance as a guide for our future has become clearer than ever. Documenting during crises, archiving our collective past, supporting researchers and revolutionaries alike, public historians are part of the landscape of revolution. We bring history to the public because it matters.
Read the full theme statement here. We hope you’ll join NCPH and AASLH in this semiquincentennial year in Providence, Rhode Island—a host city where the ongoing work of revolution is front and center, with revolutionary roots and legacies embedded in self-determination and self-rule—as we reflect on the work of revolutions past and the work that lies ahead as we take stock of our field and consider how we can strengthen and protect it for the future. 

Topic Proposals 

As we do for our standalone conferences, NCPH invites people looking to connect with co-presenters or seeking feedback on a draft proposal to submit an optional Topic Proposal by October 15, 2025. We’ll post the Topic Proposals we receive to the NCPH website for a period of feedback from the public history community to help you craft the strongest possible proposal. Then, you’ll resubmit your proposal on AASLH’s Submittable platform for official consideration for the program. 

Submitting Your Final Proposal

Your session, working group, and workshop proposals are due December 1, 2025. This year, proposal submissions will be hosted by AASLH on Submittable. Here you can also find explanations of our session formats (combined and streamlined from NCPH’s and AASLH’s formats) and see the review criteria that the Program Committee will use to evaluate proposals. 

General questions or topic proposal questions? Email Program Manager Meghan Hillman. Questions about the Submittable platform? Email AASLH Chief of Operations Bethany Hawkins.

CFP: The Materiality of the Late Medieval Book: Production, Reading, and Transition

Call for Papers – IMC Leeds 2026

Panel Series: The Materiality of the Late Medieval Book: Production, Reading, and Transition.

Deadline for submissions: 14 September 2025

We invite proposals for papers for a series of panels at the International Medieval Congress (IMC), to be held in Leeds, 6–9 July 2026. This session series will explore the materiality of the late medieval book between c. 1350 and 1540, with a particular emphasis on approaches that take the physical object as the foundation of scholarly inquiry. This strand aims to foreground the book as a material artefact – not simply as a vehicle for text or image, but as a made, handled, and interpreted object. We seek contributions that begin with codicological, palaeographical, artifactual, or structural features of books – bindings, layouts, quire structures, scripts, substrates, wear patterns, or added matter – and use these material traces to investigate broader questions of cultural practice, intellectual history, devotional life, or reading habits.

Papers may address, but are not limited to:

  • Material production: physical construction of books, use of specific materials (parchment, paper, pigments), regional or institutional practices
  • Reading and handling: how physical features shaped reading practices and reader interaction; evidence of use such as marginalia, damage, repairs, signs of wear, and ownership traces; and the repurposing, circulation, or afterlives of books
  • Transitions and continuities: how the rise of print engages with manuscript materiality – including hybrid books, printed texts with manuscript additions, and conservative or experimental formats that blur traditional boundaries
  • Methodologies: new approaches to studying the physical book as evidence and object

We particularly welcome work grounded in close analysis of specific manuscripts, printed books, or fragments. 

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with your name, institutional affiliation, and a brief biographical note (max. 100 words), to Janne van der Loop, (jannevanderloop@uni-mainz.de) by 14 September 2025.

Selected papers will form part of a multi-session strand proposal for IMC 2026. Applicants will be notified of the outcome around 20 September 2025. For questions or further information, please contact Janne van der Loop (jannevanderloop@uni-mainz.de) or Ad Putter (A.D.Putter@bristol.ac.uk)

We look forward to papers that place the material form of the late medieval book at the centre of scholarly interpretation.

Contact Email

jannevanderloop@uni-mainz.de

Seeking 1-2 scholars to co-present in LASA 2026 panel “Memoria en llamas: Archivos, fuego y narrativas de la pérdida”

We are currently seeking 1–2 scholars to co-present at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress in Paris, 2026, for a panel we are organizing titled:

“Memoria en llamas: Archivos, fuego y narrativas de la pérdida”

This panel will explore libraries and archives lost to fire, focusing on how such events can be interpreted through the analysis of archival silences—silences shaped not only by political or institutional forces, but also by environmental challenges, especially fire. We are interested in work that considers how fire transforms the archive, how destruction becomes part of its record, and how these narratives intersect with ecological, historical, and cultural contexts.

If your research engages with these themes, we invite you to join us in examining the intertwined histories of archives, preservation, and fire.  

Please send a brief abstract (150–200 words) and short bio to camilaordoricab@utexas.edu or zt3@nyu.edu by august 25th, 2025.

Contact Information

Camila Ordorica – camilaordoricab@utexas.edu

Zeb Tortorici – zt3@nyu.edu 

Contact Email

camilaordoricab@utexas.edu

URL

https://lasaweb.org/en/lasa2026

CFP (session): Neglected Heritage and Hidden Narratives in Central and Eastern Europe from 1860 to 1950

Modern states of Central and Eastern Europe have written strong narratives of national identities based on the idea of cultural and ethnic homogeneity. Formerly part of the Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman Empires, they sought detachment from the Imperial past even if their history and identity were decisively shaped by it. This session aims to reflect on how the material heritage of marginalised groups has been appropriated, neglected and destroyed, but also on how it survived despite the official policies. It further focuses on the art historiography and on what was written in and written out of official narratives. Proposals are invited on any type of material heritage and writings that shed light on the survival and neglect of the minority’s heritage in Central, Eastern Europe and the neighbouring regions. Potential questions to be addressed are: How have new narratives of national art and architecture excluded other narratives? How were the diverse artistic traditions of the Roma communities racialised as less-developed foreign cultures throughout Eastern Europe, from Czechia to Greece? What happened under new nation-states to the cultural diversity of majority-Muslim regions such as Dobrogea and Crimea or with the Ottoman heritage of Yugoslavia? How was the material heritage of various “non-official” communities preserved and promoted despite states’ desires?

Contact Information

Cosmin Tudor Mine

Contact Email

cosmin.minea@phil.muni.cz

URL

https://caa.confex.com/caa/2026/webprogrampreliminary/Session16745.html

CFP: Archive-It at DLF

Archive-It partners and friends will meet on the morning of Monday, November 17, 2025, to coincide with this year’s DLF Forum in Denver, CO. We invite your proposals for talks, panels, demos, and discussions. You may find the latest information and share your proposals here: Archive-It at DLF.

The Archive-It team encourages proposals from BIPOC presenters, first-time presenters, and representatives of organizations of all sizes and types on topics including, but not limited to:

  • Workflows
  • Access integrations
  • Research use cases
  • Advocacy and funding

Deadline for submission of proposals: Friday, August 8, 2025

Notification of acceptance:  Wednesday, August 13, 2025

All are welcome to attend freely but space is limited. Registration and event details will be announced soon. We hope you can join us! We look forward to hosting more Archive-It events at conferences year-round.

To learn more about recent Archive-It partner meetings, see:

Best,

The Archive-It team

CFP: 31st International Conference on the History of Cartography: Bridging the Past and Present in Cartography

Call for Papers
31st International Conference on the History of Cartography
Bridging the Past and Present in Cartography
Prague & Brno, Czechia | 7–11 July 2026
www.ichc2026.org

The Faculty of Science of Charles University, the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Moravian Library in Brno, the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University, and the Czech Geographical Society, under the auspices of the Czech Cartographic Society, are pleased to invite proposals for papers and posters for the 31st International Conference on the History of Cartography. ICHC is the only academic conference solely dedicated to advancing knowledge of the history of maps and mapmaking, regardless of geographical region, language, period or topic. ICHC promotes free and unfettered global cooperation and collaboration among cartographic scholars from many academic disciplines, curators, collectors, dealers and institutions through illustrated lectures, presentations, exhibitions, and a social program. In order to expand awareness of issues and resources, each conference is sponsored by a leading educational and cultural institution.

The biennial conferences are organized in conjunction with Imago Mundi CIO. ICHC 2026 builds upon Czechia’s robust tradition of research in the history of cartography and related disciplines, a tradition that has flourished for more than a century.

Proposal submission now open: Please submit proposals for paper and poster presentations at www.ichc2026.org

Under the broad rubric of Bridging the Past and Present in Cartography, ICHC 2026 welcomes paper and poster presentations on the following themes.

1) Maps and Tourism

Encompasses the role of maps and related works in promoting tourism to regions or particular destinations and in the experience of touristic places.

2) Maps as Artefacts

Investigates the nature of maps as cultural objects that circulate within the marketplace and other networks, and that are variously collected and preserved within institutions of memory (GLAM).

3) The Third Dimension: Representing Elevation on Maps

Explores the particular strategies developed to represent the earth’s crumpled surface of hills and valleys for specific tasks, from military and geological mapping to forest management.

4) Mapping the Past: Historical Cartography at the Turn of the Digital Era 

Pursues interdisciplinary and critical perspectives on the ideological implications of new digital technologies in mapping the past, including the risks of distortion and of the instrumentalisation of historical content for political or ideological purposes.

And any other aspect of the history of cartography

Papers: Paper presentations will comprise 15 minutes for presentation, followed by a short discussion.

Posters: Posters will be installed for a dedicated session on the second morning of the conference and will remain on display through the remainder of the conference.

Panel proposals: We welcome the proposal of organized sessions. However, proposals for paper presentations, whether by one or more presenters, must be submitted and evaluated individually. Therefore, if a proposed paper is intended for an organized session, please include the information at the end of the submission form. The session’s organizer must also submit a separate proposal for the session that lists all the papers and presenters.

Workshops: In addition to the academic programme, four thematic workshops will be organised.

Scholarships: The Kislak Family Foundation will provide scholarship opportunities for up to 5 participants. More information at https://ichc2026.org/fellowship/.

Conference Language: The language of the conference is English, and all proposals and presentations must be prepared and delivered accordingly.

Key Dates:

  • Opening of the call for papers: 15 July 2025
  • Deadline for submission of proposals: 14 November 2025
  • Notification of acceptance: 15 January 2026
  • Early Bird Registration: until 15 April 2026

Estimated Registration Fees:

  • Regular: 340 EUR
  • Students: 150 EUR

Conference Venues: ICHC 2026 will convene in the historical campus of the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague (Albertov); the Moravian Library in Brno; and the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University (Brno). Participants will have the opportunity to engage with key cartographic collections and take part in thematic exhibitions, guided tours, field trips, and social events.

Inquiries: ichc2026@hiu.cas.cz

The International Conferences on the History of Cartography: 

London (1964, 1967); Brussels (1969); Edinburgh (1971); Warsaw (1973); Greenwich (1975); Washington, DC (1977); Berlin (1979); Pisa, Florence, Rome (1981); Dublin (1983); Ottawa (1985); Paris (1987); Amsterdam (1989); Uppsala, Stockholm (1991); Chicago (1993); Vienna (1995); Lisbon (1997); Athens (1999); Madrid (2001); Cambridge, MA, Portland, ME (2003); Budapest (2005); Bern (2007); Copenhagen (2009); Moscow (2011); Helsinki (2013); Antwerp (2015); Belo Horizonte (2017); Amsterdam (2019); Bucharest (2022); Lyon (2024); Prague, Brno (2026)

Contact Information

The Czech Geographical Society / Česká geografická společnost, z. s.
Albertov 6, 128 00 Praha 2, Czechia 

Contact Email

ichc2026@hiu.cas.cz

URL: https://ichc2026.org/

CFP: Colonial Objects: Material Culture of Italian Colonialism

Colonial Objects: Material Culture of Italian Colonialism

Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome
December 4-5, 2025
Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York
March 26, 2026

Abstract deadline: September 5, 2025

Italian museums and private homes hold a substantial number of objects intertwined with the history of colonialism. Their conservation raises questions about their cultural and political significance, alongside debates regarding their provenance and the practices surrounding their restitution. Furthermore, these objects still circulate widely — through auctions, marketplaces, and passed down through family inheritances. Despite this pervasive presence, the growing scholarship on Italian colonialism has not placed material culture at the center of analysis.

Indeed, although Italian colonial visual culture, exhibition history, and museum collections garner increasing scholarly attention, the objects themselves often remain on the margins of inquiry. Furthermore, no specific methodology has been developed for the study of colonial material culture, resulting in a gap in both historical and art historical research.

Bearing traces of their makers and owners, objects act upon bodily experience, affect, and emotions. Our aim is to address the production and circulation of colonial objects to understand their active role in shaping colonial imaginaries, visual culture, and imperial ideologies, and their contribution to the formation of tropes surrounding race, gender, class, and nationhood, both in Italy and abroad. Focusing on the dialectical relationship between the facture of objects and the meanings they produce, we are thus interested in exploring how colonial objects shape memories and ideas, and how their circulation during colonial rule as well as their current preservation yield insights into the negotiations of colonial legacies by colonizers and colonized subjects alike.

With the twofold goal of, on the one hand, interrogating Italian colonial objects, and, on the other, testing material culture theories through case studies that are politically charged and deeply entangled with colonial ideology, we are organizing two international conferences to be held in Rome (Bibliotheca Hertziana, 4-5 December 2025) and in New York (Italian Academy, 26 March 2026).

Rather than merely cataloguing colonial objects, then, these conferences seek to rethink the history of Italian colonialism by focusing on material culture. Therefore, we invite scholars across all disciplines to submit proposals that center on a specific artistic, artisanal, or industrial object, as a means to delve into critical issues concerning Italian colonial history: In what ways did material culture shape the fantasies and experiences of colonialism? How did various constituencies perceive and interact with colonial ideology? What representations of the colonies themselves and of colonialism as a practice emerge through material culture?

We welcome critical analyses of objects that propose unexpected, alternative, or conflicting narratives of Italian colonialism.  Possible case studies can pertain to the fields of art history, military history, economics, industry, education, fashion, design, media, consumption, and tourism, as well as everyday artifacts and utensils.  

As the starting point for this investigation, one might consider a range of questions stemming from material culture studies, including (but not limited to) the following:

●      Materiality: What are the visual, material, and formal qualities of the object and their affordances? What responses are evoked by its sensuous qualities? How does it relate to the visual culture of its time? What are its stylistic references? Does it aim to be aesthetically captivating?

●      Production: Who designed and produced these objects, and where? What materials, and techniques or technologies were used to make them? Can we retrace exchanges in imperial and trans-imperial spaces?

●      Circulation: To whom did these objects belong? How and where were they originally displayed (domestic environment, public space, etc.)? Were they part of a collection? What transnational journeys did they undertake to reach their current location?

●      Use: For what purpose were these objects intended? Has it changed over time and in different socio-political contexts, or in relation to the evolving needs and aspirations of their owners?

●      Reproduction and remediation: Were these objects one-of-a-kind or manufactured in large quantities? Did they enter the market, and if so how were they advertised? Were they remediated through different media, and how widely did these circulate in the metropolitan and colonial context?

●      Afterlife: How did the life of the object change after the official end of colonialism? Has it been restored, repurposed, or altered? How accessible has it been since then? How, if at all, is it currently displayed? Has its provenance been verified? Have there been any restitution claims or debates? If so, what impact has the restitution process had on the object and its context?

Please send a proposal of a maximum of 500 words (in Italian or English, accompanied by a short bibliography and at least one image of the object in question) and ashort bio to colonialobjects@gmail.com by September 5, 2025. Paper drafts will be pre-circulated two weeks before each conference to foster in-person debates and exchanges.

The organization will partly cover travel and accommodation expenses. For environmental reasons, speakers will be asked to attend the venue closest to them (either Rome or New York). Online participation will also be possible.

Both conferences originate from a collaboration between the research unit Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture of the Weddigen Department of the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, the Contemporary History section of the German Historical Institute in Rome, and the Italian Academy of Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University, New York, with the generous support of the Ragusa Foundation for the Humanities.

Organizers:     Carmen Belmonte (Università degli Studi di Padova/Bibliotheca Hertziana- MPI)

Laura Moure Cecchini (Università degli Studi di Padova)

Nicola Camilleri (Maynooth University)

Bianca Gaudenzi (Libera Università di Bolzano/Wolfson College, University of Cambridge)

Locations:        Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome

December 4-5, 2025

Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York

March 26, 2026

Contact Information

Laura Moure Cecchini

Associate Professor, Università degli Studi di Padova

laura.mourececchini@unipd.it

Contact Email

colonialobjects@gmail.com

CFP: Re:assemblages Symposium (Lagos, 4-5 Nov 25)

Re:assemblages Symposium (Lagos, 4-5 Nov 25)

Alliance Française de Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, Nov 4–05, 2025
Deadline: Aug 15, 2025

Guest Artists Space Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation

Provocation: What does it mean to think with African and Afro-diasporic art archives as living, contested, and future-shaping spaces?

The 20th century can be read as a formative ecotonal space—an unsettled, generative borderland where networks fractured and reformed, collaborations ignited, and tensions gave way to new modes of relation. Within this compressed terrain, distinct ecologies of African and Afro-diasporic thought and practice took shape, producing postcolonial libraries, and archives that carried with them emergent aesthetic and epistemic registers—unfinished, insurgent, and alive with possibility.

Marking the inaugural symposium of the Re:assemblages programme, this two-day gathering brings together the African Arts Libraries (AAL) Lab and Affiliates Network, archivists, curators, scholars, artists, librarians, and wider audiences to contemplate how postcolonial African and Afro-diasporic art archives and libraries act as ecotonal sites, their everyday lives, and futures.

The Re:assemblages Symposium invites inquiry into the ecologies of African and Afro-diasporic art libraries and archives energised by the radical potential of The Short Century, a temporal arc spanning 1945 to 1994 that centers Africa in postwar decolonisation, new diasporic formations, and the modernist movement of the 20th century. The symposium asks: 
– What forms of care, friction, and futurity emerge in the gaps, silences, and transitional zones of the postcolonial archive and library? 
– How might we read these spaces not as sealed enclosures, but as ecotonal formations? 
– How can we cultivate publishing ecologies within them that disrupt extractive knowledge regimes and nurture situated ways of learning?

Symposium Themes and Provocations 
The symposium is framed by the conceptual currents of Re:assemblages 2025–26—Ecotones, Annotations, The Living Archive, and The Short Century, each offering methods to inhabit postcolonial art archives and libraries, their gaps, inventories, silences, and thresholds.

Ecotones are transitional zones—spaces between distinct ecosystems, knowledge systems, and epistemologies. Deriving from the Greek tonos (tension) and eco (home), Ecotones asks: 
– What does it mean to inhabit the boundary, the in-between? 
– What knowledge is generated at points of contact, friction, and leakage? 
– How can archives, spaces shaped by colonial histories, diasporic flows, and post-independence reimaginings be read as ecotones? 
– How might ecotonal approaches help surface marginalized voices, and foster new reading ecologies, and ecotonal practices of publishing?

Annotations takes as its point of departure the marginalia, footnotes, redactions, and fragments that often surround, rather than centre, dominant historical narratives. Here, annotation is not merely a supplement, but a method. Influenced by the speculative rigour of Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation and John Keene’s poetic logic, this theme embraces annotation as a radical archival gesture: a way of writing beside, between, or against the grain. Initially conceived to activate the archives of pan-African festivals FESMAN, Zaire ’74, PANAF, FESTAC ’77, Annotations draws on various frames to ask: 
– How can annotation operate as a feminist, intertextual, and multisensory method? 
– What does it mean to annotate across silences, across generations, across space? 
– How can annotation serve as an act of resistance, a tool of memory, and a speculative strategy for working across archives—especially those that are fragile, informal, or deliberately incomplete?

The Living Archive challenges static, institutional models by emphasizing process, activation, and embodied memory. Here, the archive is not simply a place of preservation and linear histories, but a site of performance, encounter, and transformation. Artists and cultural workers draw from and contribute to archives in ways that are iterative, unstable, and alive. The Living Archive draws on artistic-led methods to ask: 
– How have artists inhabited museum collections, libraries, and archives? 
– What new languages and forms emerge when archives are accessed through gesture, voice, kinship, or editorial experimentation? 
– What gestures and practices are required to keep an archive alive?

(The Short Century: Symposium contributions under this theme will be presented by US based fellows of The Short Century Intensive, a research fellowship hosted by G.A.S. Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation, with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.)

Submission Guidelines 
We welcome proposals responding to the themes, Ecotones, The Living Archive, and Annotations, especially those that go beyond traditional academic formats. Contributions may take the form of talks and panels, performances or readings, listening sessions or screenings, workshops or roundtables, or collaborative, and intermedia presentations.

Please submit the following materials via the Application Form (https://forms.zohopublic.eu/yinkashonibarefoundation/form/CallForPapersReassemblagesSymposium202526/formperma/IxSHtFlylwPAXokwh8jGlIglobYZUCY2EVFpg9rH3yY) by 15 August 2025: 
– Abstract (300–500 words): Include a clear title. Indicate the theme you are responding to (Ecotones, The Living Archive, or Annotations). Outline the form and content of your contribution. 
– Supporting Material (3-5 items): Relevant images, video/audio samples, or links connected to 
your abstract. Please include captions and brief descriptions. 
– Biography (max. 250 words) 
– Website (and or links to professional work) 
– Curriculum Vitae – PDF, 3 pages maximum.

Selected participants will be notified in the first week of September. Selection will be made by our Advisory Committee, with preliminary shortlisting conducted by the Planning Committee.

Contact and FAQs 
For questions and inquiries, please contact: library@guestartistsspace.com.

We will offer travel and accommodation grants for five Africa-based participants. While we cannot cover travel and accommodation for other contributors, we will provide invitation letters to assist with funding and visa applications.

The symposium is scheduled to coincide with Lagos Art Week and ART X Lagos, a city-wide platform for contemporary art from Lagos and beyond, encompassing exhibition openings, art fairs, public programmes, and related cultural events.

About 
Re:assemblages is a roaming body and multi-year programme designed to foster experimentation and collaboration within African art libraries. In 2025–26, its second chapter opens with a provocation: What does it mean to think with African and Afro-diasporic art archives as living, contested, and future-shaping spaces? The programme forges vital connections between artists, publishers, and research institutions in Africa, while responding to the urgent need for a global forum to advance dialogue around archives that remain under-resourced, dispersed, and shaped by enduring colonial legacies that continue to determine their access, preservation, and visibility.

The programme is curated by Naima Hassan and coordinated by Samantha Russell, with contributions from Maryam Kazeem, Ann Marie Peña, and Jonn Gale, and funding from the Terra Foundation of American Art. 

For further details, view the concept note here (https://www.yinkashonibarefoundation.com/Portals/0/Reassemblages%202025-26%20Programme%20Concept.pdf). Previous outcomes of the 2024 edition can be found here (https://www.guestartistsspace.com/Reassemblages).

Organised by Guest Artists Space Foundation & Yinka Shonibare Foundation.

Advisory Committee
Dr. Beatrix Gassmann de Sousa, Natasha Ginwala, Dr. Rangoato Hlasane, Patrick Mudekereza, Serubiri Moses, and Dr. Oluwatoyin Zainab Sogbesan.

Planning Committee
Moni Aisida, Jonn Gale, Naima Hassan, Belinda Holden, Maryam Kazeem, Siti Osman, Samantha Russell, and Ann Marie Peña.

Re:assemblages 2025–26 is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and Afreximbank under the auspices of the Afreximbank Art Program.

Contact Information

Naima Hassan

Re:assemblages Curator

Associate Curator and Archivist

G.A.S. Library and Picton Archive

Contact Email

library@guestartistsspace.com

URL: https://www.guestartistsspace.com/News/call-for-papers-reassemblages-symposium-2025