| Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon | 21 – 22 May 2026 |
| Looking at the last two years in the land of Palestine, the Gaza genocide and the escalating colonial violence across the West Bank have been depicted as a continuation of decades-long Israeli policies and military strategies (Achcar, 2025), but also as a possible last chapter of Zionism and end of Israeli settler colonialism (Pappé, 2025). This is not happening in a vacuum, but it is part of a long-term intentional and systematic forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinian people (Albanese, 2024). And, in this current reality, the language we use to describe facts on the ground often fails us because, as Azeezah Kanji from the Yellowhead Institute writes in A Dictionary of Unnameable Violences: From Aerocide to Zygoticide in Palestine (2024), “there are no legal terms for many of the forms of violence inflicted by Israel on Palestine”. This conference aims to underscore the urgent need to confront not only the material destruction but also epistemic erasure or, in other words, the silencing of Palestinian knowledge, voices, and histories, within academia and socio-political as well as cultural spaces. Israel’s epistemic violence has been perpetrated through different levels and in different fields, as an ongoing narrative of silencing and erasing the Palestinians as a people. We recognise that documenting the unprecedented violence and dispossession currently taking place, is not only a scholarly task, but an urgent and ethical one – one that bears witness and asserts the right to narrate and to exist. Organised by the Observatory for Palestinian Studies (ISCTE), this conference will be structured around three thematic areas: 1️⃣ Connecting Palestine: Resistance(s), Transnational Solidarities, and Activism 2️⃣ Reckoning Palestine: International Law, Justice, and Education 3️⃣ Preserving Palestine: Politics of Memory, Heritage and Erasure Submission of proposals Researchers, artists, and activists are invited to participate with academic papers or artistic interventions (performances, visual works, photography, short films, poetry, etc.). Interdisciplinary formats and submissions from doctoral students and early-career researchers are highly encouraged. How to submit: Fill out the submission form by 15 December 2025 – https://tally.so/r/nPMpgV Notifications of acceptance will be sent in mid-January 2026. If you have any questions about the suitability of your proposal, please contact us at palestinestudies@iscte-iul.pt. See all the details of the Call for Papers here. |