The TRACTS Cost Action is pleased to announce an open call for participation in the symposium “Water: Traces of Social Justice in Times of Climate Crisis”, organized by its Working Groups 2 and 3 in collaboration with the Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia. The aim is to offer a platform for interdisciplinary exploration and dialogue, bringing together scholars, practitioners, and artists to critically examine the intersections of social justice and the climate crisis.
Over the past three years, the TRACTS COST Action has fostered collaborative discussions on social justice and climate change. These efforts have spanned workshops, seminars, training schools, and joint sessions to explore methodologies, ethical approaches, and hybrid epistemological perspectives. This symposium seeks to reflect on the knowledge generated through these engagements while advancing critical dialogues on the interplay between climate change and social justice.
With a retrospective and forward-looking focus, the symposium aims to:
● Illuminate existing insights and methodologies.
● Promote cross-pollination between frameworks of social justice and climate scholarship.
● Inspire innovative approaches for addressing the climate crisis and its social dimensions.
Focus and Themes
The symposium centres on water as a critical lens for exploring climate change and social justice. Water connects bodies and boundaries, flows through histories of control and resistance, and inspires new methodologies. By emphasizing water, the symposium seeks a deeper understanding of its role in social struggles, artistic practices, and activist movements.
Contributions may address diverse topics, including weaponized and controlled landscapes, post-dam futures, rights of nature, and the intersections of feminism, sisterhood, and radical heritage. Submissions are encouraged to reflect on environmental struggles involving rivers and dams or explore water-inspired methodologies to trace histories, practices, and narratives of social justice. Through these discussions, the symposium aims to connect resistant and radical practices, interrogate European borders and histories, and bring memories of social movements and extractivism into dialogue with the imperatives of the climate crisis.
Who Should Apply?
We invite researchers, artists, and practitioners working at the intersection of tracing, social justice, and climate change. We particularly welcome contributions that adopt interdisciplinary approaches or experiment with innovative, multimodal, artistic and non-textual forms of scholarship.
How to Apply
Please submit your application by 16th March to pauknerova@cts.cuni.cz. Your submission should include:
● Name, affiliation, and title.
● Short abstract (max 300 words): A description of your research or practice relevant to the symposium’s themes, including specific questions, challenges, or insights you wish to explore at the event.
● Short bio (max 200 words).
Funding
Selected participants from the TRACTS network will receive funding to join the symposium in Venice