​​  Grounded in the geological and political assemblages of island, continent, and sea, archipelagic thinking seeks to conceptualize our world through the relations among islands that encompass both the islands’ differentiation from one another and their connectivities and commonalities, fundamentally drawing on Édouard Glissant, who proposes the archipelago as a spatial and symbolic allegory of the theory of relation (Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Michelle Stephens). Notably, while recognizing historical archipelagos—both geologically formed and human-made—as replete with coloniality, extraction, and various types of injustice, archipelagic thinking engages with ‘the dynamic form of an archipelago,’ which is produced by practices, representations, experiences, and affects, foregrounding its ‘inter-connective spaces of metamorphosis’ that exhibit the creation of something new, generated by ‘island-island movements’ (Pugh). As such, archipelagos are associated with “motion, mutability, and openness to difference and change” (Wiedorn 115). 

  As Stratford et al. insist, “the movement creates the relation of an archipelago” (125; emphasis in original), archipelagos come to emerge, exist, and persist through multiple mobilities. They can thus function as “a useful decolonial and anti-imperial framework to (re)conceptualize transnational space,” since archipelagic mobilities bring the diverse lives of people and their imaginations of spaces into dialogue, going beyond conventional, continental spatial thought dependent on territories and nation-states (Wöll et al. 78-81). Therefore, “complex mobilities of all kinds as the basis for all forms of relational space” (Sheller, “From Spatial Turn” 625; emphasis in original) encourage us to give special attention not only to “fluid cultural processes dependent on changing conditions of articulation or connection” (Vannini et al. 124)—processes of creolization, hybridization, mutation, and the like—but also to infrastructures “that all involve, entail or curtail various kinds of movements of people, or ideas, or information or objects” (Urry 18); more precisely, archipelagic infrastructures that materially “connect across islands, as well as divide them, to form uneven transnational spaces” (Sheller, Island Futures 22), also shaping “expectations of the future” (Appel et al. 3) in specific ways. 

  The 2027 Critical Island Studies Conference seeks to bring archipelagos, mobilities, and infrastructures into conversation, opening up more expansive spaces of metamorphosis and creating new possibilities for alternative futures. It aims to materially and technologically complicate archipelagic thinking through mobilities and infrastructure research, while geohistorically and geopolitically multilayering mobilities and infrastructure research through archipelagic thinking. Fostering productive dialogues among them, the conference invites scholars from diverse academic backgrounds to share their ideas and inquiries at the relational nexus of archipelagos, mobilities, and infrastructures, envision alternative archipelagic futures, and generate new theoretical insights that move beyond conventional disciplinary and theoretical boundaries. 

  We particularly welcome proposals that explicitly engage with the vibrant and productive conversation among archipelagos, mobilities, and infrastructures, approaching them as theoretical frameworks, allegories or metaphors, geohistorical and geopolitical formations, or assemblages and constellations of practices, representations, experiences, materialities, and affects. We accept proposals for individual papers and panels on one or more of the following topics, including but not limited to: 

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  •  Literary, cultural, and arts studies on archipelagic mobilities and/or infrastructures
  •  Theoretical interventions on archipelagic mobilities and/or infrastructures research
  •  Ontologies of archipelagic mobilities and/or infrastructures
  •  Geohistory and geopolitics of archipelagic mobilities and/or infrastructures
  •  Affects, emotions, and senses of on archipelagic mobilities and/or infrastructures
  •  Ethnography of archipelagoes, mobilities, and/or infrastructures
  •  Resilient, sustainable, and quality archipelagic mobilities and/or infrastructure
  •  Alternative archipelagic mobilities and/or infrastructures
  •  Fantasies, desires, and speculations of archipelagic future mobilities and/or infrastructures
  •  archipelagic mobilities and/or infrastructures as technologies
  •  Other related issues

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Submission Requirements

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  Each presentation has 20 minutes (15 min + 5 min for questions). The conference will be conducted only in English. 
 

  Individual Papers: Individual submission of a paper consists of an abstract (300 words) and a brief biography (100 words), including contact information. Papers will be grouped thematically by the programme committee and may become part of panel session.
 

  Panel Sessions: A full, pre-organised panel session. A session submission should include a title, a summary of the session theme and the method chosen for facilitating discussion (300 words), as well as abstracts for each contribution/presentation (300 words). A short biography of each presenter is also required (100 words), with contact information. Panels consist of a chair, three to four paper presenters, and one discussant (optional). Panels should include time for audience discussion. 
 

  After Acceptance, all abstracts will be published on the conference proceedings. Selected papers will be considered for publication as the special issues on archipelagic mobilities and infrastructures. 

  Submit your papers or session proposals to: 2027cisconference@gmail.com 
 

  For any questions, send an email to: 2027cisconference@gmail.com

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Key Dates

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2 November 2026    Deadline for the submission of individual papers and full, pre-organized panel sessions
 

30 November 2026  Notification of acceptance for abstracts and sessions
 

30 November 2026  Early Bird registration opens
 

11 January 2027     Early Bird registration closes
 

15 February 2027   Registration closes
 

1-3 April 2027         Conference​​

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Download Application Forms

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Work Cited

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Appel, Hannah et al. “Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure,” The Promise of Infrastructure, edited by Nikhil Anand et al., Duke UP, 2018, pp. 1-38.

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Miguel, Yolanda Martínez-San, and Michelle Stephens. “Introduction: ‘Isolated Above, but Connected Below’: Toward New, Global, Archipelagic Linkages.” Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Toward New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations, edited by Michelle Stephens and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Rowman & Littlefield, 2020, pp. 1-44.

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Pugh, Jonathan. “Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago.” Island Studies Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, 2013, pp. 9–24.

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Sheller, Mimi. “From Spatial Turn to Mobilities Turn.” Current Sociology, vol. 65, no. 4, 2017, pp. 623–39.

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Sheller, Mimi. Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene. Duke UP, 2020.

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Stratford, Elaine et al. “Envisioning the Archipelago.” Island Studies Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2011, pp. 113–30.

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Urry, John. Mobilities. Polity, 2007.

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Vannini, Phillip et al. “Recontinentalizing Canada: Arctic Ice’s Liquid Modernity and the Imagining of a Canadian Archipelago.” Island Studies Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, 2009, pp. 121–38.

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Wiedorn, Michael. Think Like an Archipelago: Paradox in the Work of Edouard Glissant. State U of New York P, 2018.

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Wöll, Steffen et al. “Introduction: Conceptualizing Archipelagic Mobilities.” Journal of Transnational American Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 2023, pp. 75-92.