THE SLAS ANNUAL CONFERENCE
The conference is the key event in our calendar, attracting 200-350 participants. It normally takes place during the Easter vacation in different locations each year.
Academic panels vary widely, from economics to music via anthropology, politics, history, literature, geography and film. We have a keynote speaker and social events which in the past have included visits to galleries, film festivals and which culminate in the conference dinner with salsa dancing.
PILAS runs workshops for postgraduate students at the conference and all panels are strongly encouraged to include at least one postgraduate speaker. Postgraduate attendance is facilitated by the conference bursary.
In years where the annual conference takes place face-to-face, funding is available to assist Latin American scholars who are presenting a paper with their travel expenses.
2026 SLAS CONFERENCE - University of Leeds
9-10 April 2026
Memory Studies and Social Justice
“Memory is both compass and companion—guiding us through histories of erasure toward futures of justice.”
Cara Levey
The Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) warmly invites proposals for its 2026 Annual Conference, themed Memory Studies and Social Justice. Building on Cara Levey’s groundbreaking exploration of how collective memory shapes struggles for equity, this gathering will probe memory as a site of healing, contestation, and transformation across Latin America and its diasporas. We invite contributions taking these ideas as a point of departure for fresh analyses, creative interventions, and cross-disciplinary dialogue, as well as any other topics from the field of Latin American Studies.
Conference Themes
We welcome abstracts on, but not limited to, the following intersecting areas:
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Memory studies and environmental disasters
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Environmental justice, rights of nature, and planetary agency
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Memory politics, post-memory, and memorialization
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State-building, democratic transitions, and transitional justice
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Social and transitional justice in international relations
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Memory studies and gender
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Memory studies and race
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Digital memory studies and archival futures
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Memory studies and the Latin American diaspora in the UK
We encourage contributions from: early-career and established scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences; activists, artists, archivists, and practitioners working at the nexus of memory and justice; and interdisciplinary teams pairing academic research with creative or advocacy-based methods. Submissions may take the form of individual papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, or performance-based interventions.
Key Information:
Dates: 9–10 April 2026 (PILAS on 8 April)
Venue: University of Leeds, UK
Deadline for abstracts (300 words max): Monday 29 September 2025
Notification of acceptance: December 2025
Submission Guidelines
Please follow the following link to submit your abstract: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/pissJJXEij
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Title and 300-word abstract
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Three keywords
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A brief bio (50 words max) and institutional affiliation
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Format preference (paper, panel, roundtable, workshop, performance)
All proposals will be peer-reviewed for scholarly merit and originality,
SLAS will make a number of grants available for Latin American scholars, early-career scholars and colleagues facing financial hardship. More information about these grants will be available on the SLAS Funding page in October 2025.
In case of enquiries please contact the conference organizers
Dr Anna Grimaldi A.Grimaldi@leeds.ac.uk
Dr Markus Fraundorfer M.Fraundorfer@leeds.ac.uk
FUTURE CONFERENCES
The next conferences is planned to be hosted at Newcastle University (2027).
If you are interested in hosting a SLAS conference in the future, please contact the SLAS secretary. This document will give you a sense of the types of questions you might want to consider about hosting a conference.
PREVIOUS CONFERENCES
Details of previous conferences are available in History.
Photo: David Wood, Walls, Cuzco, Peru