Call for papers: re-orienting critical terrorism studies
We are pleased to share our call for papers for the Critical Studies on Terrorism annual conference, which will take place at the University of Edinburgh (UK) on Tuesday 8 September and Wednesday 9 September 2026.
Critical Terrorism Studies has witnessed a growing engagement with decolonial and postcolonial perspectives over the past years that have challenged the continued, even if inadvertent, Eurocentrism of the discipline and its dominant approaches. Despite these advances, the field continues to grapple with enduring forms of Eurocentrism in its conceptual frameworks, research agendas, and scholarly conversations. It is therefore time for CTS to consider a more radical re-orientation of the direction it has been taking since its foundation. In light of this, we are calling for an initiative that bridges the fields of CTS and Critical Muslims Studies (CMS). CMS has developed a rich body of scholarship that interrogates the racialisation of Muslim identities, the colonial and imperial structures shaping contemporary governance, and the epistemic conditions through which “Muslimness” is produced as a problem within global politics. Orientalist narratives of the Global War on Terror produce the ‘terrorist’ as an ahistorical and violent stranger-figure bound to an ethnically and religiously homogenous community without political will or desire while justifying death and destruction in Muslim majority countries. Muslim and Arab futurism however, in acts of refusal, speculation and reimagination seek to open spaces for world-making of more just and desecuritised futures for communities that continue to live through catastrophe and crisis. In so doing, these approaches re-examine what it means to be a political subject for those subject to ongoing exclusion, dehumanisation and delegitimisation.
We particularly welcome papers that explore how insights from Critical Muslim Studies might reshape debates within Critical Terrorism Studies, challenge its epistemic boundaries, and contribute to a broader re-orientation of the field.
- Critical Muslim Studies
- Orientalism
- Arabfuturism
- Muslim futurism
- Islamophobia
We especially encourage submissions from MA students, PGRs, and early-career researchers, scholars from the Global South, and those working at the intersections of academia and activism.
We welcome submissions in the following formats:
- Research papers
- Panels (should be four papers ideally with a chair and/or discussant proposed)
- Roundtables
- Doctoral project presentations
- Other creative engagements (send us a proposal with details)
Please send your abstract (no more than 200 words) to cst.group@bisa.ac.uk by 5pm (UK time) on 15 July 2026.
Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash