Call for Abstracts

We are pleased to announce a call for abstracts for the 2026 EPSSE pre-conference workshop on The Power of (Dis-)Placing: Affect, Practice and the Political.

 

EPSSE is especially pleased to host this workshop in collaboration with the DFG funded Research Training Group “Practicing Place”.

This one-day workshop on the 23rd of June 2026 aims to explore the political dimensions of affectivity, practice and (dis-)placings. Conceiving of affective engagements as historically and socially situated and as ongoingly producing, transforming or resisting political orderings, the workshop addresses questions such as: How are place-based hierarchies reproduced, contested, transformed and dissolved by affective practices? How are affects regulated, cultivated, or resisted within specific place-related power structures? What is the significance of (dis-)placings —public or private, institutional or informal—and dislocations in the emergence of possibilities for action, feeling, and resistance?

We invite abstract submissions that bring together philosophers working at the intersection of emotion philosophy and affect theory, practice theory, and research on (dis-)placing, with a particular emphasis on the political significance of their entanglements.

 

We welcome contributions that draw on or critically engage work across phenomenology, critical theory, feminist philosophy, postcolonial thought, queer theory, and political philosophy.
 

Confirmed speakers are:

• Imke von Maur & Robert Schmidt (Eichstätt)

• Pilar Lopez-Cantero (Antwerp)

• Millicent Churcher (Sydney)

• Marie Wuth (Erlangen)
   

We invite contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
 

• The affective politics of habit, normativity, and embodied practice

• Spatial injustice and the regulation of affective life

• Resistance and transformation through everyday practices

• The spatial distribution of vulnerability, safety, and care

• Affect and (dis)placing in decolonial and anticolonial practice

• Gendered, racialized, and class-related placings of feeling and action

• The role of architectural, institutional, and urban design in shaping affective experience

• Affective dimensions of public protest, and the performance of resistance
   

The ethics of emplacement and displacement submission guidelines:
 

• Abstracts should be no more than 500 words.

• Abstract Submission Deadline: February 15th 2026

• Submissions must be sent to imke.von.maur@ku.de with the email title: EPSSE 2026 Pre-conference

• We encourage submissions from members of groups that are underrepresented in philosophy and from those at an early career stage
   

Following the pre-conference, selected participants will be invited to contribute their papers to a special issue of EPSSE’s journal PASSION on The Power of (Dis-)Placing: Affect, Practice and the Political