IABA European Conference

Life Writing, and Social Transformation

July 23 to 26, 2025

Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra > > Call for papers until 15 January 2025

Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce that the next IABA Europe Conference will be held at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra in partnership with the Centre for Social Studies, 23-26 July 2025. We invite proposals for individual papers or panels of 3-4 papers as well as round-table suggestions on the theme of the Conference: “Life Writing and Social Transformation”.

Individual lives and lived experiences have a major impact on the understanding of the social world. Life writing is at the heart of the relationship between individuals and society, and through life writing individuals both discover and transform social structures. Significant changes worldwide have brought an increased attention to people’s lives, situated knowledges, and first-hand testimonials, but the uses and understanding of life writing and life reading vary across different cultures and geographies. The mosaic of life writing practices and studies calls for a dialogue with social life and social transformation, concerning both their origins and consequences. Life writing is about the subjective experience of reflecting and sharing life events through narratives (here understood in a large sense), and about the objective gesture/capacity to write one’s own life experiences and perceptions. There are conditions for life writing that vary for different people according to their generation, gender, geography, culture, life situation, skills, social class, education, etc. There are broader social contexts that promote and benefit from life writing. Against this backdrop, several questions come to the fore: How is life writing an instrument for social change, specifically? How new social contexts impact on our way of writing about lives (for example, are social networks a new space with impact on self-writing?). What are the empirical, processual, theoretical, epistemological preoccupations that we need to address for the study of the relationship between life writing and social change? What are the social causes and consequences of practices of life writing and reading?

By taking into consideration social inequalities, cultural and linguistic diversity, political claims, past, present, and future temporalities and projections, technological innovation, the ethics of civic responsibility, forms of horizontal communication, democratization of education, transdisciplinarity, and transprofessionalism, we are looking for papers that can contribute to the discussion on how lives and life writing can be addressed and examined in light of social transformation. Themes and issues include, but are not limited to:

Life writing and life reading literacies

Practices and genres of life writing across cultures

Life writing and social vulnerability

Auto/biography publics and concerns

Synergies of life writing practices in community

The self, the other, and creativity

Environmental issues and personal experiences

Theorising lives and social change

The social process of life writing

Testimonial and social responsibility

Technologies of the self and new technologies

Creating theoretical-practical coherences through life writing

Organizing Committee:
Allana Lacerda (CES-UC)
Ana Miguel Regedor (CES-UC)
Clara Keating (FLUC/CES)
Claudia Faria (IABA Europe)
Elsa Lechner (CES-UC)
Gonçalo Marcelo (FLUC/CECH-UC)
Letícia Renault (CES-UC)
Maritxell Simon-Martin (UDLleida)
Pedro Abrantes (UaB/CIES-ISCTE)
Sergio Barcellos (IABA/UERJ)

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Submissions:

We welcome 20-minute individual presentations and 90-minute panel sessions (preferably interdisciplinary and international).

The conference will be held in English, but French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages are also accepted.

Abstracts should not be longer than 300 words; bios should not be longer than 150 words.

[APPLICATION HERE]

Practicalities and schedule:

Conference website: ces.uc.pt/eventos/iabacoimbra2025

Conference e-mail: iabacoimbra2025@ces.uc.pt

Online submissions will open on October 28, 2024

Deadline for proposals: January 15, 2025

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by January 31, 2025

General assistance registration (no presentation): October 2024-March 31, 2025