The aim of the conference is to consider interdisciplinary approaches to the transgressive potential of queerness today. Considering grassroots LGBTQ+ activism, artistic practices, as well as academic discourse of queer theory, we seek to identify and address issues arising in the current transnational socio-political conditions. How can biopolitics be challenged by queer temporalities? How can radical activism of preceding decades be re-contextualised and employed now? Can queer social formations, based on friendship, kinship, and affective communities, be used to reconsider the heteronormative structures aided by the legislation in the international context?

Looking forward, we are interested in restoring the potential of transgressive queer activism, much of which has been now directed into the struggle of LGBTQ+ communities to enter the realm of normative domesticity, compromising its ability to challenge the state apparatus. Based on interdiciplinary, cross-national, and transhistorical research practices, we seek to address these questions in relation to nationhood, citizenship, and human rights. We encourage academic and practical responses to the analysed problem from interdisciplinary, cross-generational, and multinational perspectives.

The possible themes might include, but are not limited to:



Challenging chronobiopolitics

Community-based approaches to academic research

Radical potential of queer archives

Queer spatialities and temporalities

De-centralising HIV/AIDS narratives

Engaging with marginalised LGBTQ communities

Queer citizenships and nationalisms

Queer utopias and activism

Radical art-making

Queer artistic methodologies

Now what? Explorations of queer futurities

Disrupting centre/margins discourses

Practices of resilience and stigma management



Please include 350-word abstracts for 20-minute presentations and a short biographical note in your application. The proposals should be sent to imaginequeer2018@gmail.com by 31st May 2018.

​