This conference at the University of Münster may be of interest to our Jean Monnet EU migration and integration network.

4 - 6 September 2019
Co-hosted with the University of Lisbon
For more information, visit: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Anglistik/en/ptts/iab2019/

Conference theme

Intellectuals Across Borders explores the dynamic formations of postcolonial intellectual work in the manifold European public spheres. The conference works with the idea that writers, artists, and activists – like migrant academics and political representatives – can embrace the role of postcolonial intellectuals through intervention and public impact. As racism works vigorously across national borders while right-wing groupings across Europe are interconnected and cross-fertilize each other, critical intellectual work is called upon to make borders porous. In fact, it is the postcolonial intellectuals’ transgressive potential in inquiring and intervening – spatially, epistemologically, ideologically – which we consider vital to their relationship with European public spheres. In both theme and approach, the conference takes the following questions as a theoretical vantage point:

• While the postcolonial is constitutive of Europe itself, what marks out forms of public intellectual work as postcolonial?
• Are these distinct forms of postcolonial intellectual labour characterised through biography or location, by their mode of engagement and intervention, and/or by their subject matter?
• How can we stretch and pluralise the concept of the ‘postcolonial public intellectual’ to encompass minoritized positionalities, inflected by race, class, gender, or sexuality?