Call for papers: (En)countering violence: critical approaches to studying and representing violence, and dangerous and disposable subjects
In the context of increasing conflicts and contestations – be it associated with ongoing colonial legacies, migration, climate change, late capitalism, war and genocide, the rise of the far right, transphobia, and more – questions of violence are at the heart of global politics. Accordingly, a wealth of scholarship in International Studies explores the manifold origins, manifestations, and effects of violence, often through the lens of conflict and war. Nevertheless, the centrality of violence to International Studies is often overshadowed and obscured. The study of violence – that is, how we study violence itself – remains marginal(ised) and confined to critical subdisciplines. There is a need for an explicit focus on the ethico-political dimensions of knowledge production on violence and, importantly, people subjected to violence. This attention is crucial in a context where certain forms of violence are increasingly sanitised and rendered mundane, and relatedly, violence enacted on specific bodies is normalised. As a discipline, we lack the understandings, frameworks, and tools to adequately and ethically conceptualise violence in an integrated and sustained manner. For example, by refusing to confine the questions and politics of knowledge production on violence to administrative processes for ethical approval, research proposals, PhD methodology chapters, and superficial and perfunctory footnotes, which risk reproducing hierarchies, including of coloniality, class, race, and gender.
This symposium will provide a much-needed space to explore how we study, write, and talk about violence and people subjected to violence. It will attend to the centrality of violence in International Studies by building understandings, frameworks, and tools to conceptualise violence, in addition to foregrounding the politics of knowledge production on violence and how this can be integrated throughout the entire research process. Accordingly, the symposium is concerned with the following questions:
- What are the structures, materials, and discourses that shape and legitimate violence?
- How do we challenge the subjection of certain people, deemed dangerous, deviant and disposable, to violence?
- How can we bring together, expand on, and amplify the many theorists, frameworks, and methodologies used to study violence? Relatedly, how can we mobilise these theorists, frameworks, and methodologies to explore and challenge contemporary manifestations of violence?
- What are alternative ways of studying violence that unsettle hierarchies, including those of knowledge production?
- How do we better connect ongoing enactments of violence to the associated histories and legacies of oppression, exploitation, and exclusion?
In short, the symposium aims to unsettle assumptions about the study of violence: what constitutes violence, who is subjected to violence, whose knowledge is worthwhile, and whose experiences are legitimate. These questions go to the heart of International Studies and ideas of who matters, who can be targeted or protected, and ultimately, who is human.
The symposium is co-hosted by the Critical Alternatives for World Politics (CAWP) BISA Working Group and the Research Group in International Political Sociology, School of Society and Environment at Queen Mary University of London.
The symposium
The two-day symposium will be held on 9 and 10 September 2026 at Queen Mary University of London. The symposium will be structured around papers, each of which is expected to be between 4,000 and 5,000 words. The symposium will consist of four sessions and a keynote on the evening of 10 September. The symposium aims to put together a journal special issue and, more generally, to continue collaborations on the study of violence in the context of International Studies.
Expressions of interest
Please submit expressions of interest to the convenors (L.J.A.deHaan@UvA.nl and M.Masood@qmul.ac.uk), including a title and abstract (max 250 words) of your proposed paper. The deadline for abstracts is 17 June 2026. You will be notified about acceptance to the symposium by 19 June 2026.
Limited travel bursaries of £50 are available to support early career researchers, including PhD candidates. If you wish to apply for a travel bursary, please indicate this in your expression of interest. The symposium is open to anyone, though travel bursaries can only be awarded to BISA members.