Call for Papers
We invite you to join us for the Twenty-Sixth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, the annual meeting of the New Directions in the Humanities Research Network, hosted by Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, taking place in Lima, Peru, and online, 5–7 July 2028.
Founded in 2003, the New Directions in the Humanities Research Network is brought together by a common interest in established traditions in the humanities while at the same time developing innovative practices and setting a renewed agenda for their future. We seek to build an epistemic community where we can make linkages across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries.
Within this broader humanities framework, the conference is held in conjunction with Information, Medium & Society: The Twenty-Sixth International Publishing Studies Conference. The two conferences approach memory from complementary directions: New Directions asks how memory is embodied, interpreted, and disputed, while Publishing Studies asks how memory is published, authorised, circulated, and made publicly accessible.
Territories and Bodies in Memory:
Humanities in Dispute
Memory is never simply a record of the past. It is made and remade through bodies, territories, languages, stories, images, archives, monuments, rituals, institutions, and technologies.
This year’s theme, Territories and Bodies in Memory, addresses the fundamental elements that shape human identity: the geographical territory we occupy, which defines our relationship with nature and the environment; the body through which we interact with others and with those surroundings; and memory, in which this sensory experience is anchored and from which identity originates. Thus, inhabited spaces, the bodies that traverse them, and the humanities—conceived as that shared human territory preserved in memory—intertwine in a dynamic dialogue and integration, not devoid of tensions and friction.
The conference welcomes theoretical, historical, literary, cultural, philosophical, educational, artistic, and practice-based inquiries into memory as a living and contested field of humanistic work. We especially welcome proposals that connect questions of memory with embodiment, territory, cultural inheritance, public life, identity, language, technology, and the conditions of collective belonging.
Themes
- Theme 1: Engaged Humanities, Citizenship, and Democratic Culture: Humanistic inquiry as an engaged social practice, including citizenship education, critical thinking, civic engagement, leadership, and democratic cultures within educational and public institutions.
- Theme 2: Language, Power, and Meaning-Making: Language, discourse, and ideology in contemporary communication, including multimodal meaning-making, audience reception, interpretation, and the politics of representation.
- Theme 3: Literature, Narrative, and Cultural Imagination: Literature and storytelling as bearers of social and cultural meaning, shaping identities, memory, values, and collective futures across diverse communities.
- Theme 4: Technologies of Communication: AI, Media, and Interpretation: Humanistic perspectives on digital media and artificial intelligence, including language technologies, authorship, ethics, bias, creativity, and changing communicative practices.
- Theme 5: Place, Community, and Sustainable Futures: Sociality in space, including urban–rural relations, polycentric development, island communities, climate change, environment, and sustainability as cultural and ethical challenges.
Knowledge Experience and Format
The conference is organised as a hybrid knowledge experience, integrating in-person and online participation within a unified scholarly environment.
For in-person delegates in Lima, the conference is designed as a human-scale gathering shaped by conversation, shared inquiry, and place-based exchange. Sessions, talking circles, breaks, and informal encounters create opportunities to connect humanistic research with cultural practice, education, public life, community knowledge, and the real-world contexts in which memory is formed and contested.
For online delegates, the conference is more than a remote viewing option. Accepted proposals become Presentation Pages in CGScholar where presenters share abstracts, media, and supporting materials. Delegates participate through live online sessions, asynchronous engagement, and discussion spaces that remain available before, during, and after the event.
Across both formats, the emphasis is on reciprocal exchange rather than one-way presentation. Whether joining in Lima or online, participants are part of a shared knowledge environment where ideas can be presented, discussed, revisited, and developed into future collaborations, publications, cultural projects, educational practices, and community initiatives.
Publication Pathways
Accepted presenters are invited to further develop their conference work for possible publication through the New Directions in the Humanities Journal Collections. The Collection currently includes The International Journal of Literary Humanities, The International Journal of Humanities Education, The International Journal of Communication and Linguistic Studies, and The International Journal of Critical Cultural Studies. Submissions follow peer-review processes aligned with the scholarly standards of the Research Network.
Participants may also propose longer-form projects for relevant New Directions in the Humanities Book Imprint, including monographs and edited collections focused on humanistic inquiry, cultural memory, interpretation, place, embodiment, language, technology, and public life. Publication outlets offer traditional and Open Access options where available.
All accepted proposals are included in the conference proceedings, providing a formal record of the conference program and presentation abstracts. Proceedings help make presenters’ work discoverable as part of the annual knowledge record of the Research Network.
Member-Based Research Community
Membership in the New Directions in the Humanities Research Network is the gateway to year-round community and access, connecting members with journals, books, programs, archives, and ongoing scholarly exchange. Presenter Passes include membership; visit the CGScholar member community or learn more about becoming a member.
Join Us
We warmly invite you to submit a proposal and join us, either in Lima or online, for the Twenty-Sixth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities.
Lima offers a compelling setting in which to consider the relationships among territory, memory, culture, embodiment, language, and public life. Together, we will examine how humanistic inquiry can illuminate disputes over the past while opening possibilities for more inclusive, attentive, and responsible futures.
Sincerely,
Dr. XX, Local Conference Chair, XXX
Dr. Asun López-Varela, Research Network Chair, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Dr. Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, Chief Social Scientist, Common Ground Research Networks, United States of America