1:24 p.m.
Dear all,
Save the date and submit your proposals for the 11th CBEES Annual Conference:
Knowing Eastern Europe and the Baltics
[cid:image003.jpg@01DBB9E3.FCD2A6A0]At a time when uncertainty defines both the world and
what we know of it—when knowledge appears fragmented, contested, and inadequate—we turn
our attention to the very processes of knowing. How is knowledge produced, by whom, where,
and under what conditions? How do shifting geopolitical landscapes, emergent crises, and
new epistemic frameworks challenge modes of understanding?
The CBEES Annual Conference 2025 will explore the shifting grounds of knowledge production
and critically examine processes of knowing, geopolitics of knowledge, and different
positionalities with respect to Eastern Europe and the Baltics. This undertaking also
means to embrace the unexpected and the conference is an opportunity to investigate how
knowledge emerges in moments of rupture, how new forms of knowing take shape, and how new
relations and vantage points might reconfigure theoretical and empirical landscapes of
knowing. At the same time, the question arises of how to approach the allure of denial and
ignorance.
We invite contributions exploring conceptual, empirical, and methodological underpinnings
of knowing and knowledge production on topics featuring Eastern Europe and the Baltics.
Both contemporary and historical perspectives are of interest.
Proposals are welcome for roundtables, panels, and individual paper presentations. We
invite scholars from all disciplines, offering the following points for inspiration:
· “East” and “West” dimensions in knowledge production. Questions of centre and
periphery. Constructing and naming a region - regions as epistemic entities, objects,
subjects.
· Paradigm shifts; critical challenges to canon and master theories.
· Empirical knowledge and possibilities to challenge universalities through
particularities.
· Doubt, indeterminate knowledge, and how to approach the unknowable.
· Negation and denial; the allure of ignorance.
· Interrogating epistemic hierarchies and geopolitical assumptions that have
historically shaped research in and on the region.
· The decolonial turn and epistemology.
· Gender and knowledge production.
· Claims and limitations of authority and expertise. How researchers’
positionalities, and engagements with the region shape epistemologies.
· Embodied, situated, and practical knowledge.
· Numbers and data. Knowledge production through quantitative research.
· Artistic expressions of knowing and the unknown.
· Violence, war and the impact of existential threats on processes of knowing.
· Truth and lies, understanding propaganda production.
· New technologies and AI.
· Constructing the present by erasing/rewriting the past; remembering and
forgetting as forms of knowing/unknowing.
The application deadline is 15 August 2025, 23:59 (Swedish time - CEST).
For more details and to submit your application, please visit: Conference
webpage<https://www.sh.se/english/sodertorn-university/calendar/events/2025-12-04-11th-cbees-annual-conference-knowing-eastern-europe-and-the-baltics>
Please spread the word in your circles!
With kind regards,
Conference Organisers
