Call for Papers: International Workshop on Security Beyond Exclusion

12 May 2025

September 11-12, 2025 | University of Hamburg, Germany

In an era where security discourse is increasingly weaponized to justify exclusion and authoritarian governance, can we reimagine security beyond these dominant paradigms? The international workshop “Security Beyond Exclusion? Reimagining Desirable Security Futures” invites scholars to explore this pressing question.

We seek contributions that identify, analyze, and amplify emerging practices, infrastructures, and imaginaries of protection that contest dominant security paradigms. From feminist municipal governance to anti-racist neighborhood organizing, from queer safety practices to digital-democratic infrastructures—we are interested in living experiments that reimagine what it means to be secure.

The workshop welcomes perspectives from Security Studies, International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Urban Studies, Social Movement Studies, Legal Studies, Gender Studies, and related fields.

Key themes include:

• Prefigurative security practices at community levels
• Institutional contradictions and openings in security governance
• Security beyond the state
• Resistance to far-right appropriations of security discourse
• Feminist, decolonial, queer, and abolitionist approaches
• The future of critical security scholarship
• Methodological innovations

Submission Details:

• Abstract length: 200-300 words
• Deadline: June 15, 2025
• Submit to: nina.perkowski"AT"uni-hamburg.de
• No attendance fees
• Limited funding available for travel and accommodation

Download Full Call for Papers (PDF)

Funded under the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal Government and the Länder.