Call for Proposals: Annual Conference 2026

Call For Presentations: 2026 Annual Conference 

The Center on Forced Displacement is inviting calls for presentations for our 2025 annual conference, to be held April 13th and 14th, 2026 on our campus in Boston, MA.  

The hybrid conference will bring together interdisciplinary researchers, scholars, artists, practitioners, students, and engaged community members from around the world to discuss, debate and learn about the myriad challenges faced by forcibly displaced communities and ethical, practical, evidence-based and rigorous approaches to understand and address these challenges.     

The conference seeks presentation submissions including, but not limited to, the themes related to force displacement that focus on Health and Technology; Art, Literature, and Translation; Faith and Displacement; Education and Pedagogy, Disabilities; Deportations; and Asylum.   

We welcome submissions in the following formats:  

Panels or Thematic Conversations 

We welcome proposals for 60-90 minute panels or thematic conversations. This includes proposals for “no paper” and/or “no powerpoint/low powerpoint (no more than 3 slides)” panels in which presenters determine the most effective way of sharing their work without reading from a pre-written text or toggling through a powerpoint. We encourage thematic conversations to principally center around moderated discussion and limit initial presentations to 5 minutes per speaker. Proposals must include the intended topic, moderator biography, a list of 3-4 intended speakers, and speaker biographies. You will be responsible for ensuring speaker attendance at the conference. 

Please note that your audience will come from various backgrounds, disciplines and career stages, and to frame your panel or thematic conversation accordingly. 

Workshops  

We invite proposals for 60 min workshops with the constraint that the majority of the session must involve the direct engagement of the participants in activities. Workshops are more than welcome to interrogate the very question of what counts as ‘engagement,’ the nature of the relation between participation and observation, the active and the passive, and so forth. Workshops can be organized individually or collaboratively.   

Your workshop must be accessible to a general audience from various backgrounds, disciplines and career stages, and applicable to an audience of varied size – please frame your workshop accordingly. 

Story Lectures   

We invite proposals for 20-minute story lectures that foreground processes of knowledge creation, share research or practice insights, reflect on the act of learning, consider potential pedagogical impact made possible by nontraditional methods of teaching/presenting, and many more. Story lectures can be organized individually or collaboratively.  

Artistic Contributions  

We invite proposals for artworks, performances, and installations to exhibit. Artists are welcome to submit individual or collaborative works.  

— 

We have a limited number of travel fellowships for early career scholars, available to colleagues in all disciplines and in all parts of the world. If applying for early career travel fellowship, please send a CV and a 1-2 page statement on how the conference fits your academic and/or research goals.     

The deadline for submissions is November 10, 2025. Presentation submissions must include a title, abstract (max 350 words) and a short biography (max 250 words).    

To apply, please email CFD Events and Communications Specialist Baiden Wright at baidenw@bu.edu