The 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, for many of the disciplines which take Latin America in hand, intertwine and infuse into a shared purpose: to produce meaningful engagement and to stand in solidarity with the subjects of our research; to reflect on this relationship to find the connections between ourselves and others; and to uncover hidden truths behind common understandings.

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 of whom it speaks. These ambitions are as important now as they have ever been. 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, and an apparent rejection in some quarters of selective components of this rising exchange. The conference aims to explore the ways in which academic research can undertake to confront and mediate these contradictions.

The Postgraduates in Latin American Studies (PILAS) Committee are delighted to announce the confirmed line-up of keynote speakers for the 2018 Annual Conference. Professor Patience Schell (Hispanic Studies, University of Aberdeen) joins Dr. Jelke Boesten (Gender and Development, King’s College London) and Dr. Sian Lazar (Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge) who will all deliver keynote sessions. Furthermore, our roundtable discussion, chaired by Professor Cathy McIlwaine (Transnational migration, King’s College London), will also address the concerns of the Latin American migrant community here in the United Kingdom and will involve representatives from the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS), the Indoamerican Refugee Migrant Organisation (IRMO) and Latin American House (LAH). 

Visit our conference website now: www.pilasconference.com to read full biographies for each of our invited speakers and roundtable discussants. You can also register to attend the conference, find all the information you need on travel and accommodation in Liverpool and view a draft schedule including timings for panels, keynote lectures, roundtable discussion and social events taking place - including a film screening on the Sunday night before the conference (details to be announced). 

Instructions for submitting papers / panel proposals:

Proposals are invited for individual papers of 15 minutes duration and for full panels of 3-4 papers. 

We welcome proposals from all fields for this interdisciplinary event. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Race, ethnicity, and religion
• Gender and sexuality
• Social movements and political activism
• Conflict and violence
• Nationhood and national identities 
• Migration, geographical and cultural borders studies
• Inter-cultural dialogue and polemics
• Literary and cultural criticism
• Literature, culture, and translation
• Economic policies and economic inequalities
• Communication and (digital) media
• Climate change and environmental Crisis