Open call for contributions: 2nd Annual Conference of the EHJustice Network
Open call for contributions
2nd Annual Conference of the EHJustice Network
Global Environmental Justice and Its Limits: Complexities of Time and Space
Centre for Environmental Humanities, Aarhus University, Denmark, and online (hybrid event)
3-5 November 2022
We are delighted to announce the Call for Contributions for the second Annual Conference of EHJustice, the Network for Global Justice and the Environmental Humanities: Transformative Engagements between Academia and Civil Society funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF). We warmly welcome proposals from diverse participants including junior and senior researchers, environmental activists, artists, journalists as well as other civil society actors who wish to engage in a dialogue about concepts, practices, and multiple understandings of global justice in a moment of mounting environmental urgencies.
With this year’s conference, we intend to bring together scholarly and activist experiences that speak from different backgrounds or that crisscross the boundaries of North and South. The conference will feature keynote lectures by scholars and activists reflecting multiple approaches to questions of justice linked to their situated and specific contexts. It will further include traditional panel and round-table formats alongside more experimental forms of participation such as walks and transformative design challenges. We thus encourage proposals for innovative formats, interactive events, and multimedia presentations, alongside more traditional academic genres, such as talks, papers, and roundtable discussions. Overall, we solicit diverse kinds of contributions that address the conference’s themes and topics as they also promote cross-boundary scholarly and societal engagement.
Submission details: Paper contributions may be proposed by submitting a maximum 300 word abstract. Other kinds of contributions may be proposed by submitting a maximum 300 word description, accompanied by (visual or other) materials presenting the proposed format. Examples of such contributions may be – but are not limited to – performances, film screenings, dialogue-provoking exhibitions of objects or artefacts, conversations about dilemmas, etc. We also welcome groups that want to propose paper panels or other assemblages of contributions. In this case, please offer maximum 300 words about each aspect of the overall collection/assemblage. For all submissions, please indicate if you wish to participate on-site in Aarhus, Denmark, or online. Be sure to include name, organisational affiliation (if relevant), and email address for all people included in the proposal. See information below about our limited travel support.
Conference theme:
We intend to spark discussions about plural understandings of justice by exploring how scholars, activists and other civil society actors relate with the concept, and how they negotiate justice claims through space and time. We explicitly seek to address the temporal and spatial dimensions of global environmental justice by considering how colonial/postcolonial trajectories inform mobilization and communication strategies in ongoing conflicts over resources, territories and the distribution of risks. Crucial to speaking back to and denouncing global environmental injustices are questions of how to give shape to stories of global justice. How do we tell “terrible” stories that are still motivating, empowering and hopeful – if these are the stories to tell?
In particular, we intend to discuss how the different temporalities and histories inherent to different notions of global justice play out in environmental justice movements and how imperial/colonial pathways of extraction shape environmental justice claims and practices of transformative future-making. Furthermore, we intend to explore how to give form to (through narration, storytelling, performance, theories, video, writing) such histories and how stories – or other forms – can be assistive in breaking the course of environmental injustice.