The SHAKIN international project calls for proposals for its upcoming conference!
Over the past decades, academic work in social science has experienced several shifts, one of the most noteworthy being the rise of post-colonial thought. Decolonial thinking has indeed strongly contributed to renewed focusses on issues that have long remained on the margins of research and knowledge production. More than that, recently the very notion of knowledge is being questioned by scholars and schools of thought that seek to broaden the scope and lift the boundaries that have tightened the definition of knowledge, thereby rendering more inclusive the very conditions of its production and dissemination. ENCATC acknowledges and encourages such opening trends, by stimulating its membership and sectoral stakeholders to reflect on post-colonial matters, recently through the holding of our 2022 Global Conversation around the complex issues raised by decolonization in culture and education.
The SHAKIN project, supported by the EU’s Erasmus+ program, Strategic Higher Education Partnerships for Innovation, is operating in this sense a junction between several academic and scientific institutions, with the aim of bridging “the gaps between mainstream, canonized knowledge construction and the more hidden, marginalized ways of producing knowledge”. It is carried out by six partners from four countries (France, Germany, Serbia, Sweden): three universities (University Lumière Lyon 2, Bauhaus-University Weimar, University of Arts Belgrade) and three cultural organizations (Association Independent Cultural Scene Serbia, Stockholm Museum of Women’s History, le LABA), all of them internationally recognized in their domain of activity.
On the 26-28th June 2023, in Belgrade (Serbia), SHAKIN will hold a conference entitled In from the margins – Sharing footnotes of subaltern knowledge and practices: Questioning North-South relations and ethics of international collaboration, and calls for (not limited to) reflection and/or research papers, artistic and practical individual or collaborative works, as well as pedagogical, training and learning formats consistent with the post-colonial, decolonizing and subaltern approaches that make up the unique framework of this international project. The possible topics are defined in 26 categories covering a very large range of contemporary challenges facing today’s societies, and their cultural and artistic sectors. The papers of the conference will be considered for publishing by the ENCATC Journal (open access) as well as in the Conference Proceedings Book.
The conference, organised by the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management of the University of Arts in Belgrade in collaboration with the Association of Independent Culture of Serbia (AICS), will welcome keynote speakers Marcia Tiburi, Brazilian artist, professor of philosophy, University Paris 8; Gerty Dаmbury, writer, educator and theatre director from Guadalupe, founder of the artistic collective Décoloniser les arts Paris; and Basma El Husseini, Action for hope, Beirut. The official language is English, but Serbian would be possible for specific workshops and artworks.
The approaches covered by the breadth of SHAKIN’s framework bear very fundamental importance nowadays, in an era when the key phrases are freeing the voices and lifting the taboos accumulated through centuries of complex, highly sensitive and unbalanced historical, social and societal contexts. In academia, education like elsewhere in our increasingly diverse collective lives, such ethical and moral imperatives are pervading and stimulating dynamic and intellectually fruitful reflections and works over the past, the present and the future of our societies.
The SHAKIN project precisely addresses these very powerful subjects, placing them into the post-colonial framework, through the decolonial and subaltern lenses that give them an exceptional potential for reflection and social progress. This conference seeks to open debate areas, widen fields of reflection, stimulate new viewpoints and generate renewed frameworks of analysis that seriously take into consideration the perspective of subalternity.
The deadline for the submission of proposals is April 1st 2023, 00h Central European Time. More details can be found in the official call available here.