National Identities 25th anniversary conference- A special conference to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the journal
About the Conference
National Identities will be held at the University of Westminster, London on 12-14 September 2024.
This journal was founded in 1999 in a context of globalisation, the end of the Cold War, and processes of European integration. It emerged at a time when scholars were working through the ways in which identities are articulated, commodified and consumed through political processes and cultural products and the banal nationalism this can express.
We hope that this conference will interrogate how these themes have been reshaped by the growing twenty-first century significance of populism, surveillance capitalism, the impact of social media, climate emergency, the decline of the welfare state, growing precarity and ontological insecurity, as well as an increasingly global refugee crisis. Furthermore, we want to explore new or emergent themes such as the impact of memory studies, emerging forms of identity politics, ‘culture wars’ over heritage and memorialisation, ongoing processes of cultural decolonisation, the spread of new forms of authoritarianism or the effectiveness of governance arrangements for managing the relationships between states, national identities and citizens. In the process we hope to examine who is and is not included in the nation and the conflicts and layering of identities such processes reflect.
Likely themes and subjects for the conference might include:
- Marginalisation and inclusion in the nation
- Ethnonationalism and political movements
- Violence, conflict and post-conflict identities and memory
- National identity in representation and rhetoric
- Memory, trauma, occlusion and national identities
- Climate emergency, ecocide and national identities
- Home, asylum and national identity
- Globalisation, cosmopolitanism and national identities
- Resistance to the nation and national identities
- Decolonisation, post-colonial memories and national identities
- National identity and restorative justice
- The built environment and national identities
- Transnationalism and national identities
- Histories. literatures and geographies of national identity
Contributions are welcomed from scholars at all stages in their careers, and can take a variety of forms including papers, roundtable panels, short interventions/provocations or poster presentations.
Proposals for papers should include an abstract of 100 – 300 words and details of your affiliation. Please send these to Professor Pippa Catterall (p.catterall@westminster.ac.uk) by 30 March 2024