November 6-7, 2025

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, as part of the FORTHEM Alliance, invites scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit proposals for the upcoming Cultural Heritage Lab International Conference, dedicated to exploring cultural heritage within, across, and beyond the European Union’s borders. This year’s theme investigates the dynamics of intercultural, interethnic, and social interactions—especially in regions where boundaries (geographical, political, linguistic, or symbolic) are fluid and contested.

Global migration, forced polyglossia, and renewed regional tensions that often result in military conflicts and the encroachment of far-right movements on the global polity have become telltale signs of “living in the end times,” as Slavoj Žižek would have it. This has transformed heritage into both a site of conflict and a field of negotiation, whereas the simple dichotomy imposed by structural discrepancies such as core vs. periphery, North vs. South, East vs. West, etc. cannot by any means account for the nuanced changes in how cultural heritage is perceived, curated, and lived. These new tendencies compel us to interrogate whether or not cultural heritage has always possessed an intercultural character and has always resulted from the negotiations of different perspectives and power dynamics.

In this context, our conference aims to create a space for critical reflection on the intersections, frictions, and alliances formed in the in-betweenness of cultural spaces and in the peripheries—areas which are often overlooked yet abound in cultural hybridities and shared legacies.

We welcome contributions from fields including cultural and heritage studies, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history, linguistics, political science, art history, literature, digital humanities, economics, media and religious studies, drama, film, the performing arts, and memory studies. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome and encouraged.

Contributors are invited to submit their abstracts on (but not limited to) the following themes:

• Inter- and transcultural memory and heritage in borderlands;
• The politics of cultural preservation and erasure in multicultural societies;
• Heritage in conflict zones and the afterlife of heritage;
• Minority narratives and “discarded” national identities;
• “Minor” languages and cultures and their relationship to cultural hegemony;
• Syncretism vs. conservatism in EU peripheries;
• East-West/ North-South divides: migration, displacement, and their link to cultural heritage;
• “The West and the Rest”: Postcolonial and decolonial approaches to cultural heritage;
• Combined and uneven heritagisation: urban vs. rural heritage;
• The (digital) afterlife of cultural heritage: discard, rubbish, digital avatar, etc.;

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit an abstract of 250–300 words, along with a short biographical note (max. 100 words), to Ovio Olaru and Daniela Stanciu-Păscărița (ovio.olaru@ulbsibiu.ro; daniela.stanciu@ulbsibiu.ro) by 20.07.2025. For effectiveness, please include “Cultural Heritage Lab conference submission” into the title of your email.

The conference will be held in English and French and will take place exclusively on-site.

We look forward to your contributions!

Kind regards,

The organisers.

The “Inter- and transcultural Heritage: Conflicts, Overlaps, Coexistence” conference is organised within the EU-funded project “Establishing a Laboratory of Cultural Heritage in Central Romania” (ELABCHROM) (https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/elabchrom/conference-2025/)

Contact Information

Andrei Terian; andrei.terian@ulbsibiu.ro

Ovio Olaru; ovio.olaru@ulbsibiu.ro

Daniela Stanciu-Păscărița; daniela.stanciu@ulbsibiu.ro

Contact Email

ovio.olaru@ulbsibiu.ro

URL: https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/elabchrom/conference-2025/

Conference Dates: 18–21 November, 2025

CFP Deadline: August 1, 2025

Conference information: https://bsanz2025.wordpress.com/ 

Description:

A book is the product of multiple actors (author, agent, printer, editor, publisher), and once a book exists, its life beyond the printer depends on a whole series of additional actors (distributors, booksellers, purchasers, reviewers, prize committees, second-hand sellers, collectors, libraries).  This conference focuses on all of these processes, at different times and in different places.  Whether we regard these agents as part of a full circuit of connections or fortuitous players that may interact haphazardly, we should not conceive of the book as simply a unified container of ideas, though books often try to appear that way.  Papers that examine how any of these interactions impact on or account for the power of the book are welcome.  We especially welcome studies that examine points at which Darnton’s circuit is disrupted or rerouted in unexpected directions.  And ‘book’ encompasses all written communication: in manuscript, periodical or monograph form, physical or virtual.

The 2025 Annual Conference is now open for submissions. To participate, please submit a 250–300 word abstract along with a brief biographical blurb for the online programme. Submissions close on Friday, 1 August, with acceptance decisions by mid-August to facilitate travel plans. Presenters must be members of the BSANZ at the time of the conference. Registration fees will include a welcome reception on the evening of the 18th and morning and afternoon teas and lunch on the 19th and 20th. The Librarians’ Day on Friday the 21st will not have a separate registration fee and it will be possible to attend at least part of that day via Zoom if you are unable to join us in Dunedin.

In addition to plenary sessions, we envision 6 90-minute panels across the two days. Each panel may take the form of 3 20-minute papers with Q&A following or a roundtable format with a group of speakers each presenting very briefly to open a topic for discussion. It may also be possible to organise a panel for early-career scholars who may prefer to present shorter research talks. We are also happy to receive proposals for an entire panel. So please feel free to propose a format that works best for your topic or interests and we will see what we are able to arrange.

To submit an abstract, please send a word processor file (Word, Pages, etc) rather than a PDF, as we will be editing abstracts for a consistent style for the programme. Feel free to include an image for your topic if you wish, since the programme will be digital. We will not include pictures of speakers in the programme. Send abstracts as an email attachment to books@otago.ac.nz. (If the link [a mailto link] is blocked by your provider, just copy or type the email address the old-fashioned way.). Feel free to send any questions to that same address.