“Contested Narratives: Engagement with Latin America within and beyond Academia”

The Postgraduates in Latin American Studies (PILAS) Committee invites postgraduate, early career and junior academic researchers from the arts, humanities, and social sciences to present their work, engage in debate, and share their research on Latin America at our annual conference.

The broad theme of this multidisciplinary conference is how engaged scholarship, across a broad range of disciplines, can foster greater dialogue and collaboration between academia and local and international actors on issues relating to Latin America. The theme embraces all those separate strands of academic research that intertwine into a shared purpose: to produce meaningful engagement and stand in solidarity with the diverse peoples and cultures we seek to learn from and learn with, and to build connections across geographical and disciplinary borders.

These ambitions address what we as a committee feel must be the determined endeavour of academia: to look beyond its borders in order to enhance the impact of our research for those we seek to learn from. We are at a moment in which the movement of information carries news of distant events to us in an instant, in which a globalised economy surrounds us with ever more diverse cultural elements, and in which the Latin American diaspora is experiencing rapid growth throughout the world. Yet, paradoxically, we are also living through a moment of deeper insularity and separation. There is an apparent rejection, in some quarters, of some dimensions of the social and cultural exchange and the fading of borders engendered by contemprary processes of globalisation. The conference aims to explore the ways in which academic research can undertake to confront and mediate these contradictions.

The conference is free to attend and will feature engaging social activities including a film screening on the Sunday evening before the conference. At the end of Monday's panels there will be a drinks reception. The conference dinner (for which there will be a charge) is on the Monday evening. Details of how to book and pay for the dinner will be available soon. We will be sending out more information over the coming months to keep you up to date with the latest news from the PILAS Annual Conference 2018.