Call for abstracts - Between continuities and ruptures: exploring violence and resistance in south-east Europe

The South East Europe Working Group (SEE WG) and the University of Liverpool’s Europe and the World Centre (EWC) are pleased to announce a joint SEE workshop in Liverpool on 27 March 2025.

Over the past twenty years, since the formal emergence of the BISA SEE WG, a range of international dynamics, developments, and continuities — and the knowledge generated by exploring them — have contributed to our understanding of International Relations as a discipline and world politics as a practice. At the same time, we recognise that much of the knowledge on SEE has been shaped by part of the region’s violent history, often reproducing harmful stereotypes through extractivist research practices. On this occasion, in Liverpool, we seek to reflect on the role of South East Europe in problematising such dominant narratives across IR and other related disciplines. 

It is in that context that this workshop focuses on the theme of different types of violences and resistances in relation to South East Europe, through continuities and ruptures. To that end, we invite abstracts that approach the region not only through the traditional prism of wars and conflicts, but rather through the understanding of the multiplicity of violences—including but not limited to environmental, socio-economic, gender-based, racial, border, neocolonial, epistemic and discursive violence. We are interested in questions of the entanglements of different forms of violence in international politics and beyond, as well as their continuities and ruptures. Equally, we highlight the importance of focusing not only on violence but also on the different forms of resistance that emerge across South East Europe, from slow and invisible activism to mass protest movements. This also includes paying attention to the ways of un/doing epistemic violence while un/doing IR and academia more broadly. We welcome empirical, methodological and theoretical insights inspired by the region, broadly understood. 

Those interested in joining us should submit their paper abstracts (no longer than 300 words), along with their short biographies (no longer than 150 words) by 10 December 2024 through the link below. 

The full-day workshop will include a roundtable of past working group convenors, who will reflect on the 20th anniversary of the BISA South East Working Group, followed by two panels shaped around the accepted abstracts in response to this call. The panels are imagined as a place of exchange based on draft papers or extended abstracts and an opportunity to advance them towards journal submission, not least with the support of established and experienced colleagues. 

We have secured funds through BISA and the University of Liverpool (HLC) to support travel and visa expenses as needed. Funding priority will be given to early-career researchers. We remain committed to equality, inclusion and diversity.

Venue and date: University of Liverpool, 27 March 2025
Abstract submission deadline: December 10, 2024
Contact the organisers: seewg.group@bisa.ac.uk

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