Call for Papers
We are pleased to announce that students from the Institute of Arts and Humanities at
the University of Worcester are hosting a conference on Dismantling Structures on the
7th May 2025. We seek submissions from early career and postgraduate researchers,
ambitious undergraduate students, as well as established academics.

This conference will critically examine and deconstruct established frameworks of
knowledge within the arts and humanities, with the aim of rebuilding and potentially
transforming them. The purpose of this deconstruction is to give further insight, offer new perspectives, peel back layers, and facilitate much-needed change in an ever-evolving contemporary context.

Structures are composed of “the categories through which we make sense of the world,
the groundings that give authority to explanatory frameworks, [and] the rationales for the organization of intellectual disciplines” (Lee, 2007, pg.11). They define many aspects of our lives as human beings, encapsulating our need for rigidity, predictability, and order. Structures are the organisational patterns which also define our society and its culture; they construct the foundations for how we live, govern and interact. As cultures grow comfortable within these structures, they may lose sight of new perspectives, whilst we as researchers may seek to reimagine, challenge and destabilise these structures.

The arts and humanities are in a state of flux: positioned at the crossroads of technology, medicine, and politics. Stuart Hall observed in 1990 that the humanities were headed towards a (technological) “crisis”— this has only since accelerated (Hall, 1990, pg.11). These cultural crossroads demand a reconsideration of the accepted paradigms which underpin research in these fields, such as anthropocentrism, (socio)linguistic praxis; and, ultimately, what it means to be “human” in an age of accelerating development.

Through this conference, we hope to move our research in new and innovative directions.
We aim to “challenge the separation [and] upset the epistemological underpinnings”
between the sciences and humanities (Lee, 2007, pg.11), with the intention of developing
our respective disciplines.

This conference is a call to action: a place to facilitate change and create space to
empower new ways of thinking. Through interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches,
we also hope to create space for disenfranchised voices and experiences which have
been overlooked and misunderstood by hegemonic discourses. We welcome the
perspectives of marginalised communities, be they (gender)queer, disabled,
neurodiverse, ethnically diverse, working class, religious, or else, to provide their critical insights on structures which matter to them.

Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:
• The digital world and the future of technology
• The Anthropocene and beyond
• Medical humanities, disability studies, and/or the boundaries of science
• Humanity and post-humanity
• Politics and nationalism
• Sociolinguistics
• Cultural poetics, language, and art
• History and histories

More interdisciplinary methodologies and creative-critical approaches, such as
Practice-Based Research (PAR) and Activist Research, are welcome.
Submissions should include a 300-word abstract, a provisional title, and a 100-word
biography. Final papers should be 15 minutes long. We recommend using a visual aid on
the day and should your abstract be accepted, we will need you to provide this at least 5 days before the conference.

The deadline for submission is the 4th of April.

All submissions and queries should be emailed to:
dismantlingstructures2025@gmail.com

You are welcome to email us with any further questions and / or accessibility needs
alongside your submission.

You will be contacted in due course with more information.


Sources:
Hall, S. (1990). The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities.
October, 53, pp.11–23.
Lee, R.E. (2007). Cultural studies, Complexity Studies and the Transformation of the
Structures of Knowledge. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1), pp.11–20.