Organised by the GDI Students for Palestine with support from the GDI Innovation Fund

 

 

We invite submissions for the Interdisciplinary Conference: “Palestine & Social Justice: Decolonisation and Development Studies.” This conference seeks to critically engage with Palestine’s developmental, humanitarian, and political challenges while situating these within broader questions of social justice in the Global South. We welcome contributions from academics, practitioners, activists, and artists working at the intersection of Development Studies, Economics, Political Economy, Feminist and Postcolonial Theory, Middle Eastern Studies, and beyond. We are committed to making this conference accessible and inclusive. We particularly encourage submissions from early career scholars, Global South-based researchers, artists, and activists, and welcome non-traditional formats.

 

Key dates and deadlines

• Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2025
• Notification of acceptance: 30 July 2025
• Submission of presentations: 15 September 2025
• Conference: 26 September 2025

 

Conference themes

These include, but are not limited to:

• Economic costs of occupation and destruction in Palestine
• Development under occupation: aid, infrastructure, and institutional politics
• Gender and women’s rights under occupation
• Displacement, forced migration and migration
• Urban issues: Urbicide, reconstruction, and speculative capital-driven urbanisation
• The political economy of settler colonialism
• The political ecology of destruction: land and resource grabbing, socio-environmental struggles and transformations
• Comparative perspectives: Palestine and other decolonial struggles
• Decolonial approaches to knowledge, social justice, and development
• Future imaginaries of justice, liberation, and peace in the Middle East
• Art, activism, and storytelling as political praxis

 

Some potential questions to grapple with include (but are not exhaustive):

Historical and discursive foundation: How has colonial geopolitical discourse shaped mainstream academic narratives about Palestine? In what ways can decolonial theory help us reframe Palestinian histories and epistemologies? How should Palestinian voices, narratives, and primary sources be integrated into curricula across Development Studies, Economics, Political Science, etc.? What frameworks exist for centring Palestinian voices and encouraging co-authorship, and how can they be further utilised?

Development, economics, and resource justice: How does prolonged occupation shape patterns of economic dependency, labour precarity, and informal markets in Palestine? How does resource (water, electricity, etc) scarcity – and its governance – illuminate broader dynamics of control, dispossession, and resistance? How does occupation-driven environmental harm/ecocide worsen resource justice in Palestine?

Political science and governance: What role do international legal frameworks (e.g., Geneva Convention, ICC)  play in shaping policy debates – and activist strategies – around occupation, settlement, and resource control?

Urban and environmental issues: To what extent is the current context in Palestine driving urban and environmental transformations and the emergence of socio-environmental struggles in the face of such transformations?

Production, collaborations, co-authorship: What opportunities do these and similar initiatives open up for the co-production of knowledge, inter-regional cooperation and the production of tangible outcomes?

Comparative perspective: In what ways does the Palestinian struggle resonate with other anti-colonial and Indigenous movements (e.g., Rohingya, Kashmir, Western Sahara)?

Data sovereignty & justice: How are data-collection systems utilised to reinforce inequality?

Art, activism and solidarity: What are the ethical responsibilities of academic-activist partnerships on and off campus? What models of “artivism” (e.g., protest installations, digital storytelling, sound art) have proven most effective in sustaining long-term solidarity campaigns? How do campaigns like Queer BDS decode pinkwashing and what lessons do they offer to broader solidarity?

Youth & student Activism: What lessons can be learnt from previous student-led activism? How does social media affect the active organisations? How do surveillance, shadow-bans, and algorithms affect outreach?

 

Submission formats

We invite submissions in any format that critically engage with Palestine’s developmental, humanitarian, and political challenges, situating these within broader questions of social justice in the Global South.

Below are some examples:

• Academic papers and other individual or collective presentations.
• Panel and roundtable discussions: Thematic dialogues among scholars, activists and practitioners. We particularly encourage panels that include two or more of the above types of participants.
• Policy dialogues: Bridging academic research with actionable policy engagement.
• Horizontal learning exchanges and decolonial workshops: Interactive spaces for collective reflection, practice-sharing, and political education.
• Art & multimedia exhibitions: Installations, visual works, photography, short films, or sound pieces (to be displayed in the lunch/networking space).
• Story circles & testimonies: Curated personal narratives from Palestinians and activists.
• Lectures/teach-ins: Radical pedagogy on topics like liberation, occupation, and global solidarity.
• Any other format that serves the purpose of critically engaging with the conference theme.

 

Submission guidelines

For paper/report/presentation submissions:

• Abstract of your paper/report/presentation (max 500 words)
• Title, name(s), affiliation(s), and contact email(s)
• Brief bio of contributor (max 200 words)

 

For panel discussion, workshops, and roundtable proposals:

• Description of proposal (max 300 words)
• Medium & format (e.g. roundtable, panel, etc.)
• Technical/space requirements (e.g. round tables/theatre style room, multimedia, etc.)
• Title, name(s), affiliation(s), and contact email(s)
• Brief bio of facilitators and key panellists (maximum 3) (max 200 words)

 

For art-based and creative proposals:

• Description of proposal (max 300 words)
• Medium & format (e.g., installation, film, photo series, short videos with commentary, etc.)
• Technical/space requirements
• Title, name(s), affiliation(s), and contact email(s)
• Brief bio of artist/facilitator (max 200 words)

 

Submission Link:

Please submit your contribution/s via this form: Submission Form

 

Funding and bursaries

We aim to provide partial bursaries for participants who do not have any alternative funding sources, depending on the total number of participants, the bursaries requested and the overall cost of the conference.

 

Contact

• For further queries, please contact: conference@manchester.ac.uk
• Follow us for future updates on LinkedIn

 

 

Photo by Ash Hayes on Unsplash

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