Living in the midst/context of strong tensions and political polarizations that threaten how society is organised and the fundamentals of democratic legitimacy, the 28^th International Meeting of Research and Investigation is dedicated to reflecting the social contract and its contemporary transformations. At a moment in which democracy itself, human rights and humanitarian concerns are under threat, EIRI seeks to renew and motivate discussion in respect of the reasons that political authority is regarded as legitimate by the interdependent relations between political subjects and governing authorities. The event is interdisciplinary in nature and seeks papers and/or panels in the areas of arts, humanities and social sciences.

The social contract, in its liberal form, serves as a metaphor that can be readily adapted to support pragmatic, utopian and dystopian political visions. An interdisciplinary reflection seeks to reveal the transformations that traverse contemporary societies and continually reconfigure fundamental norms and political institutions. Although not a real or historically datable document, the social contract, as a metaphor, nevertheless carries significant weight and force in the political imagination. The ideas surrounding it permeate discussions on popular power, constitutionalism, and the rights and duties of the people, as well as emancipatory reflections on revolution, resistance and disobedience. More than a static founding myth, the social contract can be understood as a dynamic, affective arrangement, continually renegotiated, contested and rewritten within political, legal, cultural, linguistic, literary and communicational practices. This structural mutability is equally reflected in the plurality of perspectives that permeate and transform it, making the adoption of interdisciplinary approaches and visions unavoidable

Thus, the vitality of the social contract is transported beyond institutional solidity, also taking on symbolic and affective dimensions: trust, recognition and perceptions of justice and belonging. In this sense, the social contract is not confined to a normative framework but depends on cultural and meaningful frameworks that give it substance and continually renew it. Far from resting on some ultimate foundation, it emerges as the result of contingent and performative discursive articulations, defined by affections and materialities, which seek to establish meanings, construct equivalences and establish political frontiers. The centrality of discourse, understood not as language, but from social constitutive dimension, is decisive in this sense. It is through discourse that the tangible and effective boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are drawn; that identities, knowledge and spaces within chains of equivalence and difference are articulated; that narratives of legitimacy are constructed; and that the ways in which authority, protection and equality are conceived, contested and reconfigured are established.

Thus, DLAC-UTAD, CES-UC, and CEL-UTAD join forces to foster debate around the classical dimensions of the social contract, while also encouraging new readings, problematisations, and critical reconfigurations of this concept, particularly in a context marked by polarisation, institutional transformations, and challenges to liberal democracy.

The conference welcomes both individual paper proposals and closed panel proposals, consisting of a coherent set of papers articulated around a shared theme. The coordination of such panels shall be undertaken by those proposing them, who must provide the panel title, a brief thematic framing, and the abstracts of the papers included. The scientific committee will be responsible for validating their thematic unity and coherence.

Proposals in Portuguese, Spanish, and English are welcome under the following thematic axes, without prejudice to the submission of papers that may fall within other relevant lines of reflection:

• Fictionality and/or the metaphor of the social contract;
• The role of women: from historic exclusion to inclusion and contemporary reconfiguration;
• Exclusions from the social contract associated with ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion and/or culture;
• Affects, emotions, regimes of awareness in the legitimacy, contestation and reconfiguration of the social contract;
• Phenomena and social dynamics which drive democracy and the social contract;
• Consensus and dissidence: the role of the arts in the construction, questioning or dramatization of the social contract;
• The power of language in the definition of the rules of the social contract and its communicational contracts;
• The multiplicity of social contracts and contributions from other areas of knowledge;
• Literature as a terrain of contestation and reinvention of the political system;
• The social contract and dystopia in respect of literary genre;
• Discourse, linguistic and pragmatic: social equilibrium, conflict and implied contracts of communication;
• Cinema, theatre and the arts in general in the staging of questions pertaining to authority, protection, exclusion and belonging;
• The examination/review of the social contract in cinematic productions;
• Democratic constitutionalism, fundamental rights and the transformation of the social contract;
• The transformations of the social contract and its role in the construction of democratic societies most resilient to authoritarian and autocratic projects;
• Populism and political radicalization in the context of challenges to the social contract;
• Democracy in dispute: reconfigurations of the social contract between resistance and oppression;
• New conflicts of the social contract in the contexts of crisis, polarization and structural inequality.

The aim is to promote an interdisciplinary space for theoretical reflection and empirical analysis that approaches the social contract not only as a normative or judicial-political category, but also as a symbolic, narrative, and cultural construction, continuously subject to dispute, erosion, or renewal.

Relevant information:

Format: In person | ECHS | DLAC (Edifício I, ECHS – Quinta de Prados, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal)

Online: closed panels or a set of papers presented online. A hybrid format is not envisaged. When submitting a paper or panel proposal, participants should indicate their preferred mode of participation (in person or online).

Registration fee: 50 euros
Fee waiver: members of DLAC, CES, and CEL; UTAD and CES students

Contact e-mail: eiri@utad.pt

Important dates:

Abstract submission: 20 June
Notification of acceptance: 10 July
Conference registration: 5 September
Final programme announcement: 15 September

Note | Paper proposals must be submitted by 20 June 2026 using this form. Submissions should include a title, an abstract of 150 to 250 words, keywords, and a brief biographical note of 100 to 200 words. Submissions are accepted in Portuguese, Spanish, and English.

Organizing Committee | Elisa Gomes da Torre (UTAD), Isabel Fernandes Alves (UTAD), Cristiano Gianolla (CES-UC), Maria da Felicidade Morais (UTAD), Marisa Vieira Mourão (UTAD), Luciana Cabral Pereira (UTAD), João Bartolomeu Rodrigues (UTAD), Manuel João Cruz (UTAD; CES-UC), Mark Wakefield (UTAD)