Call for Papers

2024 BRISMES Annual Conference

1-3 July 2024, Lancaster University

The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, SEPAD, Richardson Institute, and the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University warmly welcome submissions for the 2024 BRISMES Annual Conference on any topic or area related to the MENA region. In addition to the main theme and focus of our next conference, areas of relevance to BRISMES include (but are not limited to): politics, culture & society, language, literature, history, linguistics and translation studies, in and related to the MENA region.

Conference Theme

Proliferating Entanglements: Matter and Meaning in the Middle East

In Meeting the Universe Halfway, Karen Barad develops the term “entanglement”, a concept that captures how “existence is not an individual affair. Individuals do not preexist their interactions; rather, individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating”. That is, objects, events, ideas and agents are not separate entities with inherent properties, but phenomena that emerge from their mutual relations. Barad’s work not only seeks to transform the way we understand the world, it also strives to trace and make such intra-actions visible in an effort to reconfigure the relations that shape our world. In this conference, we seek to interrogate life, matter and meaning in the Middle East by way of these relations, and the entanglements that underpin them.

Entanglements between the legal, political, social, economic, and spatial take on a range of forms, conditioning not only the spectacular and momentous but also the ordinary and the everyday. They resonate across all aspects of life, shaping the articulation of identities, languages, arts, landscapes, not to mention politics within states, between states and globally. In this conference, we seek to unpack the nature of these connections, relations and encounters from an array of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. We are particularly keen to explore how the prism of entanglement may illuminate dynamics within, between and across the societies and polities of the Middle East.

How it works

  • We accept three submission types: individual papers, panels and roundtable submissions;   
  • We welcome submissions from social sciences and humanities scholars working in/on the MENA region;  
  • We encourage the inclusion of panels and roundtables in non-English languages spoken in the MENA region.

Calendar

  • 30 October 2023: Submissions open
  • 12 January 2024: Deadline for all submissions - papers, roundtables and panels
  • 26 January 2024: Acceptance notification emails sent out. Registration opens
  • 26 January 2024: Bursary applications open – deadline 22 February 2024
  • 8 March 2024: Bursary application results sent out
  • 27 March 2024: Presenter/Speaker, and Chair registration closes
  • 10 April 2024: Final programme published
  • 10 April: Registration for non-presenting delegates opens
  • 10 May 2024: Registration for non-presenting delegates closes
  • 1 July 2024: Conference begins

Conference management system

We use a conference management system called Oxford Abstracts for submissions and registration. To submit your proposal for an individual presentation, panel and/or roundtable, you must open an account with Oxford Abstracts. Once you are logged in, you’ll be able to submit your proposal. If you have any issues, please get in touch at conference@brismes.org

Database of Expertise

The Database of Expertise in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies provides a publicly available list of MENA experts with their research and areas of expertise.

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