Tag: international

Call for Chapters: Dangerous Writings

Colleagues are invited to submit chapters for an edited collection of Dangerous Writings.

In October 2025, the Dangerous Writings symposium on the Ethics and Practicalities of Working with Risky Texts brought together scholars, archivists, practitioners, and creatives at the University of Manchester to consider the multiple forms of danger embedded in writing, curating, and reading. “Dangerous writings”, for example, include incendiary political texts or memoirs that reveal classified or confidential information, letters from prison and exile, have long served as catalysts for transformation. Yet they are also laden with numerous ethical, emotional, and sometimes legal implications for those who collect them, handle them, and/or encounter them.

This edited collection seeks to develop the conversations initiated at the symposium. At the heart of this endeavour lies a set of questions about power and responsibility. What does it mean to work with writing that unsettles or resists? How do archives, institutions, and researchers navigate the demands of care and risk? And what forms of knowledge or possibility open when we approach these materials with an ethical sensibility?

Contributors are invited to explore dangerous writings in all their complexity, whether through historical, sociological, literary, archival, or practice-based approaches. We are interested in chapters that illuminate how such texts are produced under conditions of constraint; how they challenge authority or institutional narratives; how they demonstrate forms of solidarity and resistance; and how readers, researchers, and custodians negotiate the emotional and professional labour involved in engaging with them.

Works across the social sciences that reflects these tensions are especially welcome. By thinking across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, we hope to advance understanding of what risky writing does and what responsibilities it generates for those who work with it.

Schedule

  • First full chapter drafts (approx. 8,000 words): September 2026
  • Editorial comments returned: November 2026
  • Revised final drafts due: February 2027
  • Proof-ready manuscript submitted to publisher: April 2027
  • Anticipated publication: Summer 2027

Expressions of Interest

Please signal your interest in contributing by emailing Jon Shute (with Emily Turner and Marion Vannier in cc) by Friday, 16 January 2026. At this stage, a brief provisional title and 250 word abstract will suffice.

CFP: International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) Annual Meeting

Dear all,
I am pleased to share with you the call for papers for the upcoming ICOHTEC Annual Meeting, which will be held at the Democritus University of Thrace in Greece from 8–11 October 2026, in collaboration with the Laboratory of Technologies, Research & Applications in Education/ School of Humanities and the Ethnological Museum of Thrace in Alexandroupolis, Greece.

The theme of this conference, “Engaging the History of Technology”, invites critical reflections on how history of technology can engage with evolving methodologies, theories and pedagogies, and other branches of historical study to demonstrate that understanding technologies’ pasts are essential to navigating contemporary challenges. The conference, therefore, seeks contributions across spatial and epistemic boundaries: from the everyday and local to the geopolitical and planetary; from archival practice to classroom teaching and public engagement; and from discipline-specific research methods to interdisciplinary collaborations.

Contributors may engage with one or more of the following themes, or even suggest new ways of thinking about: 
1. The History of Technology between the Local, the Regional, and the Global:
• Circulation of technologies, expertise, and knowledge across borders
• Adaptation and appropriation of technologies in different cultural contexts
• Tensions between globalisation and localisation in technological change
• Regional networks and their role in shaping technological trajectories
• Colonial, postcolonial and decolonial dimensions of technology
• Networks of maintenance and repair

2. History of Technology, Historiography and Education:
• Methodological innovations in researching the history of technology
• Interdisciplinary approaches and their challenges
• Teaching the history of technology in universities and schools
• Public engagement and the communication of technological history
• The relevance of technology history to contemporary policy debates
• Digital humanities and new forms of historical scholarship

3. Intersections between the History of Technology and Other Fields of Historical Study:
• Technology and social history: class, labour, gender, and everyday life
• Technology and cultural history: representation, identity, and meaning
• Technology and environmental history: sustainability, resource use, and ecological change
• Technology and economic history: innovation, industrialisation, and development
• Technology and political history: governance, regulation, and power
• Technology and the history of medicine: cultural values, therapeutic practice, and material conceptions about the human body

4. Special Focus: Museums, Material and Intangible Cultural Heritage, and Public Engagement: 
Given our collaboration with the Ethnological Museum of Thrace, we particularly welcome proposals that engage with material and intangible culture, museum practices, and public history. We are interested in innovative session formats that:
• Explore tensions and synergies between academic and museum approaches to technological history
• Demonstrate object-based learning methodologies
• Address the challenges of communicating technological history to diverse publics
• Examine the role of museums in preserving and interpreting technological heritage
• Study visitor engagements with intangible heritage, particularly those of marginalised and silenced ethno-cultural communities
• Critically examine the funding relationships between private technological and industrial interests, and museum

We welcome proposals in the following formats:
Paper presentations
Individual and author teams’ presentations. Please, submit an abstract of up to 350 words.

Panel Sessions
Thematically coherent sessions of 3-4 papers. Panel organisers should submit a panel abstract (up to 400 words) describing the theme and its significance; after approval the conference committee and the panel organisers will issue a specific call for proposals (individual or author teams’ paper abstracts up to 350 words each).

Roundtables
Discussion-based sessions with 4-6 participants addressing a specific question or debate. Organisers should submit a description of the topic and format (up to 350 words); names and brief bios of participants (up to 100 words each); key questions to be addressed.

Graduate Student and Early Career Opportunities
ICOHTEC is committed to supporting emerging scholars. We particularly welcome submissions from graduate students and early career researchers. The conference will feature:
• Visual Lightning Talk Competitions for graduate students
• Mentorship opportunities pairing students with established scholars
• Book development workshops

Submissions of abstracts through the conference website
Opening: 15 December 2025
Deadline: 31 January 2026

Official conference website: https://icohtec2026.hs.duth.gr
Email address: icohtec2026@gmail.com

Please find attached the detailed CfP and feel free to circulate it with your networks.

Thank you very much.

Contact Information

Organising Committee, ICOHTEC 2026

Contact Email

icohtec2026@gmail.com

URL

https://icohtec2026.hs.duth.gr/

CFP: Istanbul: Cultural Pasts – Urban Futures

Full call and more information here. Abstracts due Dec. 15, 2025.

Definitions of heritages, cultural pasts and urban futures are intrinsically linked. They cross disciplines, geographies and times. They can be complex, contradictory and often contested. As a result, when we think about heritage we must think holistically. UNESCO is explicit about this. Heritage is related to place and the traditions of its peoples. The future of a city is connected to the history on which it was built. Questions of contemporary culture are always aligned with their past, and their future. In this context, heritage, culture and place are all entwined.

To understand this interconnection requires historical knowledge, social context and an awareness of art and design, whether that be related to a community narrative or a global movement. It needs to be viewed through artworks, buildings, cities and objects, both ‘universal’ examples of architecture and sculpture, and more understated design vernaculars and local crafts. It needs to be seen as something ‘intangible’ – a sense of place and identity or the meaning ascribed to a city, neighborhood or local artwork. In short, it needs to be examined across disciplinary boundaries and scales.

Seeking to engage with the varied ways in which we understand heritage, cultural pasts and urban futures then, this conference asks how we interpret these themes locally, regionally and internationally. It does so while seeing the host city, Istanbul, as a place that typifies the varied questions at play.

Historically seen as the meeting point of Europe and Asia, Istanbul was an imperial capital for the Byzantine, Roman and Ottoman Empires. One of the most visited cities in the world, it was European Capital of Culture in 2010. With the centre of the city classified a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right, it boasts iconic examples of both art and architecture, the Hagia Sophia and the Grand Bazaar being just two of the most famous examples. Home to cutting edge design, digital art, modern architecture and music, it is seen as a centre of contemporary culture.

Located in this iconic setting, the Cultural Pasts – Urban Futures conference is expressly international and welcomes perspectives from across a range of fields: the humanities and the social sciences; architecture, urban planning and landscapes; heritage studies and design, and more. As such, it is open to local, regional and international discussions of art historical research, building renovation projects, digital art and heritage, anthropological study and socio-cultural critiques – past, present and future….

Reflecting the interests of Işık University and AMPS, presentations will be loosely organized around several strands, including but not limited to:

Architecture & Design – papers on the diversity of research in the fields of architectural, landscape, urban planning and design theory | Digital Heritage – questions and cases studies of technologies and medias such as film, laser scanning, VR and data mapping in the heritage sector | Socio-Cultural Studies – critiques of the socio-cultural issues that comes into play when thinking about culture, place and heritage | Art History – discussions on art historical projects, theories and practices internationally | Historical Conservation– considerations on sites of heritage, whether from the fields of archaeology, museology & conservation, or social questions of heritage led gentrification or regeneration | Art & Design – examinations of how contemporary artists, architects, and designers engage with context and heritage.

CFP ‘Instrumenta altaris’. Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy

In the Middle Ages, Christian liturgy was far more than a sequence of prayers and ceremonies: it structured religious practice, shaped sacred space, and gave material form to the expression of faith. Objects, vestments, and books played a central role in this framework, endowed with a visual, tactile, and symbolic language that embodied the theology of the sacred. The International Conference Instrumenta altaris: Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy seeks to refocus attention on the material dimension that, throughout the medieval centuries, rendered the invisible visible and preserved —often in fragmentary form— a tangible legacy of devotion.

For several decades, medieval art historiography has moved towards a reassessment of what was once pejoratively labelled as “minor arts”, no longer regarded as decorative appendices to the dominant monumental tradition, but as essential components for understanding the spaces, gestures, and imagery that shaped Christian liturgy. This shift owes much to the work of scholars such as Colum Hourihane, Eric Palazzo, Cécile Voyer, Klaus Gereon Beuckers, and Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, who have drawn attention to the luxurious, performative, and sensory dimensions of medieval liturgical art.

Organised by the research project Thesauri Rituum at Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid), this conference focuses on three main categories of liturgical artefacts: ritual objects —sacred vessels, reliquaries, crosses, censers— whose craftsmanship reveals a theology of materials; sacred vestments, textiles that not only clothed liturgical ministers but transformed them into figures of transcendence endowed with graces bestowed through ordination; and liturgical books, often illuminated manuscripts, which contained not merely the order of prayer but a spiritual choreography of Christian time. These elements were not autonomous but interdependent, belonging to a practice in which art was not simply contemplated, but activated and handled within liturgical performance —something difficult to reconstruct solely from written sources.

The International Conference Instrumenta altaris: Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy is therefore also an invitation to reconsider the status of medieval art through the vitality of liturgical practice. It calls for a dialogue between form and function, between aesthetics and rituality, between the history of images and the presence of objects. This approach reflects a historiographical sensibility that no longer accepts the nineteenth-century hierarchy between the “major arts” and objects of worship, but instead pays renewed attention to those voices excluded from traditional academic classifications. For in the Middle Ages, the sacred was not confined to grandeur; it was equally revealed in the refinement of the minute and in the quiet eloquence of material signs that accompanied each rite, gesture, and ceremony.

Preferred Thematic Lines

The International Congress ‘Instrumenta altaris’: Ritual Objects and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy accepts proposals for on-site presentations in Spanish, English, Italian, or French that may be framed within the following lines:

1. Historiography and Theory of Medieval Sumptuary and Liturgical Arts

Proposals consisting of historiographical approaches to the study of sumptuary arts, with special attention to their revaluation within medieval art history. Also included will be studies addressing Christian liturgy as an aesthetic, performative, and spatial category, from interdisciplinary methodological perspectives (art history, theology, anthropology, musicology, philology, or cultural history, among others).

2. Materiality and Agency of Liturgical Objects

Presentations addressing questions centered on the matter, technique, use, and circulation of ritual objects: sacred vessels, ritual artifacts, vestments, and liturgical manuscripts. Both case studies and comparative approaches to ecclesiastical treasuries, relics, or sacred textiles will be considered, paying attention to their symbolic construction, cultic functionality, and artistic value.

3. Image of Objects and Objects in Images

Studies addressing the visual representation of liturgical objects in manuscripts, wall paintings, sculpture, or any figurative medium, as well as research on how these artifacts were visualized, interpreted, and re-signified in artistic productions from later periods, from the Early Modern era to the present.

4. Anthropology of Sacred Objects

Analyses focused on the social, symbolic, and ritual contexts of creation, use, and transformation of liturgical objects. Special consideration will be given to studies addressing processes such as copying, dismemberment, transfer, donation, inheritance, reuse, or re-signification of these pieces in scenarios different from those for which they were originally conceived.

5. Current Presence and Musealization of Medieval Liturgical Art

Presentations addressing the place and treatment of medieval liturgical objects in current museums, collections, and heritage institutions. Included are both innovative curatorial proposals and the ethical, hermeneutic, and pedagogical dilemmas posed by exhibiting decontextualized ritual artifacts, now detached from their original cultic function.

Travel Grants for Master’s and Doctoral Students

To encourage young researchers’ participation, the congress organizing committee will award four grants to cover national or European travel expenses to the best presentation proposals submitted by master’s or doctoral students.

These grants will only cover travel expenses to the congress city (Madrid), excluding accommodation, meals, or local transportation. They will be awarded based on criteria of academic quality, originality, and relevance among applicants.

Requirements to apply for the grant:

  • Being enrolled in a master’s or doctoral program at the time of proposal submission.
  • Explicitly indicate in the submission form the intention to apply for the travel grant.
  • Traveling from within Spain or Europe.

Key Dates Summary

  • Deadline for presentation proposal submissions: October 1, 2025  →  EXTENDED UNTIL OCTOBER 15
  • Notification of acceptance: November 1, 2025
  • Early registration deadline: November 15, 2025 *
  • Congress dates: January 20-22, 2026

* At least one author per presentation must register for the conference in the corresponding category once they have received acceptance of the paper. Only properly registered participants will receive congress certifications and documentation.

Contact Information

https://eventos.urjc.es/go/instrumentaaltaris

Contact Email

proyecto.thesaurirituum@urjc.es

URL

https://eventos.urjc.es/go/instrumentaaltaris

CFP: Photographic interiors: between staging and documentation / Intérieurs photographiques : entre mise en scène et documentation

Photography, along with other printed image technologies, is a major component of the ordinary visual environment that papers domestic surfaces, at the same time it proves to be a particularly adequate means of documenting interiors. The conference “Photographic Interiors: Between Staging and Documentation” aims to think through this mirror effect of photographed photographs, by considering together images of domestic worlds and everyday image practices anchored in the dwelling. The aim is twofold: to examine the various ways of capturing interiors through photography, and to think about the life of images within interiors. The conference will be held on 7 April 2026 at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), Paris and co-organised by InVisu (INHA/CNRS) and ECHELLES (Université Paris Cité/CNRS). We invite you to send your proposals in French or English (an abstract of 300 words max. with a title and an image) by November 7, 2025 to images.invisu@inha.fr

Contact Information

Organization:
Manuel Charpy (InVisu, CNRS/INHA)
Éliane de Larminat (ECHELLES, Université Paris Cité/CNRS)
Ece Zerman (ECHELLES, Université Paris Cité/CNRS)
 

Contact Email

images.invisu@inha.fr

URL

https://invisu.cnrs.fr/2025/10/14/7-11-2025-appel-interieurs-photographiques/

Attachments

interieurs-photographiques-conference.pdf

CFP: Treasures of Jewish Material Culture: Living Archives of Memory, Heritage, and Research in the Middle East and North Africa

The Ben Zvi Institute in Jerusalem invites scholars to submit proposals for a day-and-atwo-day-half conference, to be held in Jerusalem on March 29–30, 2026. This conference will explore the rich material legacy of Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa, examining how these tangible remnants serve as living archives of social, cultural, and historical experience. 

Although today only a few Jewish communities remain in the Middle East and North Africa, the region preserves a rich and multifaceted Jewish past. This heritage is embodied in an extensive array of material culture, including hundreds of synagogues and cemeteries, and countless Judaica items and textual sources dispersed across Arab and Islamic countries.These materials are not static relics; they form part of a living archive, a dynamic and tangible conduit through which the histories and experiences of Jewish communities can be reinterpreted within their lived environments and the social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics thatshaped them and continue to reshape them. The study and preservation of this living archive emerges within the broader context of minority rights and cultural heritage in the region, though this conference will focus specifically on Jewish heritage itself rather than minority issues more broadly. 

Building on this perspective, the dynamic character of the living archive is continually reinforced, as ongoing discoveries and studies of archives, sites, and genizot further underscore its vitality. It is a continually evolving repository, offering invaluable sources for both qualitative and quantitative research across disciplines. Beyond their historical significance, these materials are vital for understanding how Jewish heritage is preserved, reused, and reinterpreted within local cultural practices and public discourse today—usually taking place through government institutions and civil-society organizations—most of whom are not Jewish and who regard the products of Jewish culture as part of the local culture. 

The conference invites contributions that explore, but are not limited to, the following themes: 

  • Mapping Jewish Material Culture: aesthetics, spatial organization, and reinterpretations of Jewish-Muslim relations 
  • Jewish Sites as Spaces of Memory: synagogues, cemeteries, and public heritage sites 
  • Libraries, Genizot, and Papyri: archival discoveries and the study of Jewish life in MENA 
  • Contemporary Responsibilities: preservation and legal status of Jewish sites, Judaica, and cultural heritage in modern Arab states  
  • Nationalism and Identity: the positioning of Jewish heritage within national narratives 
  • Repurposing and Reuse: adaptive uses of Jewish sites and Judaica in contemporary contexts 

Each talk will be 20 minutes long, followed by a discussion. 

Interested participants should submit a 300-word abstract and a short biography to: via this link  by November 9, 2025.

Questions may be directed at Ms. Sandra Furtos:  Sandra@ybz.org.il  The conference will be conducted primarily in Hebrew, with several lectures in English. Proposals may be submitted in either language.

CFP: Reclaiming Craft: Decolonial Perspectives on Heritage and Innovation in the Islamic World

Craft traditions from the Muslim world have often been framed through colonial and Eurocentric lenses, reducing them to exotic artifacts or static relics of a bygone era. This session seeks to disrupt these narratives by exploring and reimagining traditional crafts in present and future contexts while maintaining their profound historical and cultural significance. Can crafts be represented in contemporary art and museums without erasing their original meaning or commodifying their heritage? Can current theoretical and/or methodological frameworks dismantle colonial legacies and promote equitable engagement with these traditions?

We invite submissions of papers presenting a critical examination of the decolonizing process of craft histories within the Islamic world and their evolving paths. Case studies exploring different artistic traditions are welcome, as well as ones focusing on specific media (including ceramics, textiles, metalwork, woodwork, calligraphy). Panel contributors could address topics such as intersections between craft and contemporary art expressions, technological adaptations of crafts, the role of Islamic aesthetics, and resistance to cultural appropriation. We also encourage different methodological approaches to examine the various facets of craft preservation and innovation, such as postcolonial theory, material culture studies, Islamic art historiography and Islamic epistemologies. Submissions may be in the form of traditional research papers or more informal practice-based presentations. We would also consider combining some presentations into a roundtable discussion, allowing for a more collaborative dialogue.

Ultimately, the session seeks to reframe traditional crafts as dynamic, living practices that contribute to the formation of cultural and spiritual identities, an exploration of the ways in which decolonial perspectives can encourage sustainable and innovative approaches to craft representation and evolution in a global context.

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Sami L. De Giosa, University of Sharjah, lgiosa@sharjah.ac.ae

Mariam Rosser-Owen, V&A Museum, m.rosserowen@vam.ac.uk

For further information, see: https://forarthistory.org.uk/reclaiming-craft-decolonial-perspectives-on-heritage-and-innovation-in-the-islamic-world/

CFP: Digitalisation and (Un)Sustainability: Assessing Digital Waste and Material Pollution in the City

CFP from Urban Planning, open access journal

About the Issue
Recent developments in AI technologies have exacerbated existing concerns about the (un)sustainability of digitalisation and datafication. These concerns are related to the limitations of resources both natural and infrastructure-wise (Dekeyser & Lynch, 2025), to the exhaustion of the latter provoked by the excessive AI-use (Wang & Yorke-Smith, 2025), digital archiving, and mundane data consumption (Vale et al., 2024). This is related to the glut of digital footprints and waste in cities, which has been a problem for both cities and the media for centuries, albeit supercharged in the contemporary moment. What is new is the excessive use and normalisation of an (un)sustainable relationship with digital technology, including the everyday use of tools such as Chat GPT (Hogan, 2024). These tools have severe carbon footprint impacts, using as much water as an average family uses in almost two years for server cooling and electricity generation. For every hundred words generated by the service, an average of three bottles of water are consumed (DeGeurin, 2023).

The smart city and the new digital twins’ tropes—along with prescriptive and acritical perspectives that technologies will be the panacea for any complex issue—are part of the problem (Chiappini, 2020). Discourses around the effectiveness of these types of initiatives and projects often create, semantically and semiotically (Babushkina & Votsis, 2022), a distorted view of digital solutions for fictitious issues, including distortions of key human traits such as knowledge, meaning, and embeddedness into reality. On a smaller scale, the everyday life consumption on search engines, direct messaging, social media addiction, multimedia file exchange, and purchases on big tech logistic platforms pollute not only the environment but the collective consciousness, producing confusion, exhaustion, and fatigue. This constant generation of an amount of information that pollutes the brain becomes what Lovink (2019) defined as “brain-junk.” The number of apps keeps increasing, and so does the data they collect, but users are not always aware and digitally literate about these risks. Hence, both co-dependency on media technologies and a lack of a high degree of digital literacy can be considered societal and spatial issues that might create unevenness. It is unfortunately not possible to control-click emptying the trash from digital waste and material pollution: much of it goes beyond the current understanding and technical capability to take care of. Therefore, there is an urge to overcome the rapid accelerationism of techno-determinism and solutionism and identify tactics and strategies aimed at reducing digital waste.

This thematic issue is concerned with the timely and vital problem of digitalisation and its (un)sustainability, fostering a discussion on the waste and pollution, digital and material, caused by massive datafication and urban platformisation (Cristofari, 2023). The relationship between the geographical scale, socio-political goals, and the technological design of digital infrastructures is of crucial importance to the understanding of the issue of digital waste and its possible reduction (Chiappini & Ferrari, 2024). For instance, data centres account for about two percent of all global energy use, and the raw amount of energy consumed by data centres doubles roughly every four to eight years (International Energy Agency, 2022). Hence, in terms of urban planning, the localisation of data centres has key implications, with direct consequences over the surrounding environment with regard to air pollution and climate change. The thematic issue encompasses inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives from urban studies and planning, including digital geography, sociology, semiotics, environmental studies, and legal approaches. It aims to engage critically with the normative and prescriptive discourses which favour a techno-determinist view where smart city projects are celebrated. We invite papers that deal with concepts such as waste, noise, and excess in terms of data, materials, time, labour, cultural surplus, chatbots, and AI-powered services, also, but not exclusively, in relation to the uselessness and ineffectiveness of smart city projects and digital twins’ experiments.

References:

Instructions for Authors
Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal’s instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Urban Planning is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Open Access
Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal’s open access charges can be found here.

CFP: Cold altitudes: knowledge, imagination, and experiences of mountain ice

Editor’s Note: I think this is the first time I’ve seen the phrase “ice as archive,” and I hope there is an archivist who is able to participate!

Call for conference papers

Cold altitudes: knowledge, imagination, and experiences of mountain ice

Date: 11-12.05.2026

Venue: University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Organisers: Christine Bichsel (University of Fribourg), Katja Doose (University Lyon 2)

From glaciological expeditions to snow myths, from avalanche laws to mountain poetics, ice has shaped how humans engage with high-altitude environments. This conference explores how societies have known, represented, and inhabited mountain ice—broadly understood to include glaciers, snowfields and avalanches —through empirical and conceptual lenses across the humanities and social sciences. Recent advances in the ice humanities and related fields explored the manifold relationships between humans and ice mainly focusing on examining polar and circumpolar contexts. A systematic account on mountain ice is missing in the social sciences and humanities. This conference seeks to examine human-ice relations as part of the cultural, political, ecological, spiritual and scientific dimensions of mountains. 

We invite contributions that investigate mountain ice as a medium of knowledge, cultural meaning, and social life. How have glaciers and snow been imagined in literature and art? How have they been measured, inhabited, feared, celebrated, or transformed into resources? What epistemologies, cosmologies, infrastructures, or legal regimes have crystallized around frozen heights? We particularly welcome papers that address: 

• Histories of mountain glaciology, avalanche science, and snow observation 

• Scientific, local, and indigenous knowledge practices related to mountain ice 

• The cultural imagination of glaciers, snow, and avalanches in literature, film, or visual arts 

• Ice as a legal, political, or territorial entity in mountain regions 

• Aesthetic, emotional, or sensorial engagements with mountain ice 

• Ice as archive: materiality, memory, and temporality in frozen mountainous environments 

While grounded in mountain regions, we also welcome conceptual reflections that connect mountain ice to broader discussions in environmental humanities, environmental history, historical geography, or science and technology studies.

We welcome submissions from junior and senior scholars. The format of the conference will be interactive. Conference papers will be pre-circulated, and participants’ commentaries will guide the discussions. We expect participants to submit their full draft conference papers by 01.05.2026. We aim to produce an edited volume from this conference.

Abstracts of up to 300 words, with an indication of the sources the research is based on, and a short biography (max. 100 words) should be sent by 31.10.2025 to christine.bichsel@unifr.ch AND katja.doose@univ-lyon2.fr. 

Accommodation and transport will be partially covered by the organisers, with priority given to financial support for junior scholars. 

Contact Information

Katja Doose

Université Lyon 2

Contact Email

katja.doose@univ-lyon2.fr

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