Newsletter
1. CALAS/HIAS Fellowship. Political rights and democracy in Latin America
In cooperation with the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Studies (HIAS), CALAS invites outstanding scholars, scientists and artists from Latin American research institutions to carry out research projects related to studying and reflecting on the topic of the political Right and democracy in Latin America. Researchers from all disciplines and at all stages of their careers, from the postdoctoral level on up, are welcome to apply. This call is open to candidates from all Latin American countries and covers a wide range of disciplines, such as political economy, social sciences and humanities. The fellowship provides for a four-month stay in Hamburg and two months in Kassel, starting in February 2025.
The call is open until May 31, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
2. CALAS/HIAS Fellowship. Illegalized drugs in Latin America and beyond
This call for applications concerns research projects related to illegalized drugs in Latin America and beyond. Contemporary shifts in the global drug prohibition regime are accompanied by high indices of violence related to drug trafficking. Some governments in Latin America set in motion legalization processes, especially of cannabis, to counter illegal flows of funds and high incarceration rates. Also, North American and European countries like Germany set the first steps to regulate the possession, consumption, and production of cannabis according to public health approaches or commercial perspectives. Researchers from all disciplines and at all stages of their careers, from postdoctoral level onwards, are welcome to apply. This call is open to candidates from all Latin American countries. The fellowship provides for a four-month stay in Hamburg and two months in Bielefeld, starting in February 2025.
The call is open until May 31, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
3. Platform for Dialogue: Connected Histories of the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and the Americas: Slavery, Racialization, Resistance and Cultural Diversity (San José de Costa Rica, October 10-12, 2024).
The purpose of this Platform for Dialogue is to present and discuss studies that seek to establish the different characteristics of slave societies (slave trade and market, forms of resistance, legal regulations and social practices) of the Caribbean framework, trying to unravel the relationships that were established with other territories at a double level of analysis. It proposes to explore new transdisciplinary, trans-Caribbean and transatlantic research approaches in search of a better understanding of power dynamics, slave and post-slave, post-colonial and decolonial history, environmental challenges and processes of cultural hybridization, both in the insular and continental Caribbean, in sovereign and non-sovereign territories, in urban space as well as in rural and indigenous communities. At the same time, we are interested in knowing the main ways and circuits in which this cultural interlocution was produced, received, transformed and circulated in and through the region. We are also interested in exploring which are currently dominant, which continue to resist, which are in decline and which are emerging, and which are the main regional processes and circuits currently involved in their production, reception and circulation.
The call (Spanish only) is open until May 1, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
4. Platform for Dialogue: Crisis of political representativeness: when God is everywhere but attends in the capitals (Buenos Aires, September 4-5, 2024)
Among the different processes that shape a scenario of permanent mutations, with recurrent crises and multiple impacts on the central actors of public life, it is possible to identify the loss of centrality of political parties as structurers of public discussions and the advance of the democracy of audiences; the growing prominence of personal leaders and the emergence of "compass" leaders; the increase in demands for rights of a particularist nature to the detriment of universalist ones; the multiplication of citizen protests and mobilizations; the emergence of "anti-system" discourses, polarization and political antagonisms, among others. In short, these processes question the very idea of representation, the delegation of power and political leadership, and contribute to a growing dissatisfaction with the usual forms of mediation between civil society and the State. This Platform for Dialogue aims to investigate the ways in which these political processes are reconfigured in the light of the different local, regional and/or subnational scales and what territorial particularities take on the multiple aspects of the crisis of representation beyond the strictly national orbit.
The call (Spanish only) is open until May 1, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
5. Platform for Dialogue: Socio-ecological transformations in Latin America. Crises, struggles and challenges for the 21st century. (Santiago de Chile, October 16-17, 2024)
The purpose of this Platform is to address, from inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives, as well as from the dialogue between knowledge, the current state of these debates. To this end, it considers it essential to delve into the genealogy of these conflicts and concerns in Latin America, where the struggles against colonialism, extractivism and bad development are constitutive of various social actors who have built over decades -even centuries- knowledge and conceptual elaborations that it is pertinent to incorporate into a discussion that, if these paths are not considered, remains among specialists and with a halo of novelty that does not do justice to our trajectories of mobilization and critical thinking.
The call (Spanish only) is open until May 12, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
6. Platform for Dialogue: Transdisciplinary approaches: critical political thought and power from Our America-Afro-Abya Yala, the Global South and the world. (Guadalajara, September 18-20, 2024)
The social sciences and humanities that are thought and practiced in Latin America and the Caribbean have been modeled by Anglo-Eurocentric thoughts and conceptions, against which this region of the world has promoted epistemological ruptures of diverse caliber, whose scope is propitiated by a dialogue that goes from the inter to the multi and transdisciplinary. This epistemological turn is nourished by Western thought, where the dialogue between social sciences and humanities contributes the originality of a thought that is unique to our region. Its conceptual sources are varied; the idea of the 'Far West' (A. Rouquié), the transdisciplinary bet of the Modern World System (I. Wallerstein) or the transdisciplinary dialogues offered by the critique of the coloniality of power (A. Quijano). In the critique of modernity/coloniality of power, pertinent references of sense of universal scope are processed, which propose the unity of the diverse (S. Rivera), which seek a horizon of civilizing sense centered on liberation policies (E. Dussel), in the critical political economy of the Theory of Dependency (V. Bambirra) and in the critique of internal colonialism (González Casanova), to mention some traditions. The purpose of this Platform for Dialogue is to contribute to the critical reflection on some of the most mind-blowing topics of critical Latin American political thought.
> The call is open until May 19, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
7. Platform for Dialogue: Old and New Geopolitical Perspectives in Latin America: Tensions and Opportunities (Montevideo, October 29-30, 2024)
Latin America has played a particular role in the world system immediately after 1492. Currently, the different global processes of the present, such as the growth of China's global influence, the different European initiatives for the region, the emergence of new economic dynamics, generate multiple tensions, reconfigure geopolitical roles and, at the same time, offer specific opportunities for the region. This platform invites to reflect, from the contribution of different disciplines, on the changes and continuities in the location of Latin America in the global scenario. Particularly invited are contributions that problematize the long-standing historical, colonial and neocolonial processes that shaped specific economic, political and cultural roles for the region. At the same time, we welcome current reflections, from both critical and propositional perspectives, that shed light on the geopolitical tensions, challenges and opportunities that the new global phenomena imply for Latin America.
The call (Spanish only) is open until May 26, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
8. Platform for Dialogue: Crisis of Democracies: Threats and Challenges in the Context of Identity Emergencies (Buenos Aires, November 12-13, 2024)
The notion of crisis is pertinent for framing and reflecting on the direction of contemporary democracy in Latin America, insofar as we are witnessing the non-conformity with the characteristics that had defined it since the mid-twentieth century, in order to witness an ongoing mutation that is reformulating, in an unstable process and uncertain course, notions and aspects such as identities, citizenship, representation and rights. This Platform analyzes these phenomena from three points of view: 1) State and public policies, 2) political system, parties and representation, 3) Polarization, radicalism and political antagonisms.
The call (Spanish only) is open until June 2, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
9. Platform for Dialogue: Urban Ecosystems in Latin America and the Caribbean. Crisis and reconfiguration of urban networks. (Havanna, December 19-20, 2024)
Latin America and the Caribbean in the 21st century continue to be urban societies because cities constitute the "habitat" of about 80% of their population, but also because of the culture of "inhabiting" the city, beyond the always conflicting distinctions or continuities between the rural and the urban. This inhabiting, as a set of practices, representations and historical and daily narratives that allow subjects to place themselves and act in a given spatial-temporal order, transcends the local to become intertwined in a network of relationships where political, economic and environmental decisions, pressures and demands play a decisive role. From this logic, one of the main challenges for the region is the urban expansion articulated to the different multi-scale dynamics, whether local, national, regional or global, in relation to their socio-ecological impacts from their political, economic and environmental conditioning factors. This Platform for Dialogue will bring together both experts and actors in the processes, approaching the problem from a relational perspective, considering structural-institutional factors and making visible the subjectivities that construct, perceive, transform and resist these conditions in the Latin American and Caribbean urban-rural framework.
The call (Spanish only) is open until June 2, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.
10. Undisciplined Knowledge 2024
The University of Guadalajara and the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS) invite undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students to publish a science communication text in the editorial project Conocimientos Indisciplinados. The objective of the project Conocimientos Indisciplinados is to publish science communication materials produced by students, in co-authorship with a professor, both from the University of Guadalajara. The purpose of the project is, in addition to generating publication spaces for students, accessible to the diversity of students and professors of the University, to promote inter and transdisciplinary dialogue and learning spaces.
The call (Spanish only) is open until April 7, 2024. Conditions can be consulted here.