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Call for Papers: PILAS Conference 2027

“A Sensory Region: Reimagining Development, Resistance, and Emancipatory Practices

in Latin America"

6-7th April 2027  | Newcastle University, England

 

 (Preceding the SLAS 2027 Conference: Democracy in Question?)

The Postgraduates in Latin American Studies (PILAS) Network invites proposals for its 2027 Annual Conference, titled “A Sensory Region: Reimagining Development, Resistance, and Emancipatory Practices in Latin America”.

 

PILAS is the postgraduate affiliate of the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS), a close-knit community of PGs whose work engages with Latin America across disciplines and institutions. Based in the United Kingdom and connected to researchers internationally, PILAS is dedicated to creating opportunities for postgraduate students to connect, collaborate, share research, and support one another throughout our academic journeys.

 

PILAS 2027 focuses on how our senses are intertwined with political, social, and economic forces. The conference frames the ‘sensory’ not only as an academic theory but as an intersectional perspective deeply rooted in collective practices. We will explore visions of development, power relations and collective resistance in Latin America and its diasporas through body and affect.

 

Academic and institutional discourses on Latin American development have historically privileged hyper-rationality, mercantilism and natural resources extraction, as well as conventional textual/visual archives, which may reduce complex realities to crisis-driven narratives and to linear visions of growth. To address this issue, this conference seeks to foster scholarly and practice-based discussions on development by centralising the sensorium. 

 

In Latin America and its diasporas, practices centred on life, nature, and territory offer sentipensar as an alternative framework that bridges feeling and thinking. Sustainability and ecological justice are essential to these practices. By examining how sensory landscapes are socially stratified, historically produced, and politically charged, we aim to uncover historical and emerging emancipatory practices and grassroots resistance that challenge traditional developmentalist visions and the commodification of attention and affect.

 

The conference will be held in person at Newcastle University on 6-7 April 2027, providing a welcoming, collaborative, and engaging space for postgraduate students to share our research and engage in meaningful peer conversations.

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We propose the following questions as potential starting points:

  • How is knowledge regarding development created, by whom, and through what sensory, bodily, or institutional archives?

  • How do changing political landscapes deploy sensory regimes, affect, and discourses to shape development goals, and how are these manipulated or subverted?

  • What are the methodological and creative challenges of researching, archiving, preserving, and transmitting intangible heritage and sensory experiences in academic and artistic practice?

  • How do sensory experiences mediate power, inequality, memory, and political agency across Latin America and its diasporas?

  • How are sensory regimes racialised, gendered, and commodified by institutional and market interests, and how are they resisted?

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We will also welcome papers that are not directly related to the above conference themes.

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Conference themes

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We welcome interdisciplinary contributions that engage with Latin America and its diasporas beyond seemingly monolithic views, adding nuanced perspectives to the study of this sensory region and its people. This includes fields such as literature, translation, film studies, digital humanities, social sciences, history, anthropology, sociology, and different forms of creative practices.

 

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • Emancipatory experiences and practices from the grassroots

  • Knowledge creation: who creates it, and how?

  • Environmental justice and toxic sensoria

  • Sensory care labour and sustainable economies

  • Music, sound, and political movements

  • Foodways, taste, and the political economy of appetite

  • Textiles, craft, and material culture

  • Cinema, photography, muralism, and digital visual culture

  • Sensory archives and intangible heritage

  • Literary and narrative representations of the senses

  • The senses in migration and diaspora

  • Memory, the senses, and remembrance

  • Methodological and creative-practice experiments in sensory research

 

Submission Guidelines

We encourage submissions from postgraduate and early-career researchers, particularly MA, MFA, MSc, and PhD students, as well as artists, activists, and practitioners, working across all disciplines and methodologies within Latin American Studies.

 

We particularly welcome works in progress and proposals from those at the early stages of their PG journey. PILAS offers a supportive space for discussion and feedback, making it an ideal forum to share developing ideas, methodologies, or projects in progress.

 

Submissions may take the form of:

  • Individual papers

  • Full panel (with 3 to 4 papers)

  • Creative interventions

 

Submissions are to be written (and then delivered) in English, Portuguese or Spanish.

 

In the case of full panel submissions, the panel convenor will be responsible for the application, including the panel title and abstract, as well as the details of the 3-4 papers (paper title, abstract, keywords, short bio, name, affiliation, current course of study, and e-mail of each presenter).

 

Please submit your proposal through this form by 11 December 2026, including the following:

  • Full name;

  • Email address;

  • Affiliation and current course of study;

  • Paper or creative intervention title; 

  • Panel details (if these apply to you);

  • Abstract (250-300 words); 

  • 3 keywords; 

  • Which of the above lines of enquiry your topic falls into (if applicable); 

  • Short biography (50 words);​

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Key dates:

  • Submission deadline: Friday, 8 January 2027

  • Notification of acceptance: Early February 2027

 

If you have any questions about the conference, please feel free to contact us at pilasconference@gmail.com.

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We look forward to your participation and to creating an enriching space for critical dialogue and collaborative approaches!

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Reading List

  • Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Ines Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee, eds. 2018. Feeling It: Language, Race, and Affect in Latinx Youth Learning. Taylor and Francis.

  • Fals Borda, Orlando. 2009. Una sociología sentipensante para América Latina. CLACSO / Siglo del Hombre Editores.

  • Federici, Eleonora, and Marilena Parlati, eds. 2018. The Body Metaphor: Cultural Images, Literary Perceptions, Linguistic Representations. Morlacchi Editore.

  • Le Breton, David. 2007. El sabor del mundo. Una antropología de los sentidos. Nueva Visión.

  • Mignolo, Walter, and Catherine Walsh. 2018. On Decoloniality. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371779.

  • Ochoa Gautier, Ana María. 2014. Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376262.

  • Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 2020. Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: On Decolonising Practices and Discourses. Translated by Molly Geidel. Polity.

  • Rodriguez, Iokine. 2020. “The Latin American decolonial environmental justice approach.” In Environmental Justice: Key Issues, edited by Brendan Coolsaet, 78-93. Routledge.

  • Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Duke University Press. 

  • Zaragocin, Sofía, and Martina Angela Carreta. 2021. “Cuerpo-Territorio: A Decolonial Feminist Geographical Method for the Study of Embodiment.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111 (5): 1503-1518.

For any further inquiries, please contact pilasconference@gmail.com.

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Photo: Patience Schell, Tulum ruins, Mexico.

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