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Call For Papers: Panel on Youth at the EASA APeCS conference on Future-Making in Times of Conflict, Violence and Insecurity

Join us at the EASA APeCS conference at the University of Edinburgh on "Future-Making in Times of Conflict, Violence and Insecurity." Elena Miltiadis and Mette Fog Olwig are co-organizing a panel on "Youth as the Future: Imagining, Practicing and Constructing Futures in Insecure Times"
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  • Universal Aspirations vs. Geopolitical Divides: Imagining the World as a “Post-Millennial” in the SDG Era (Research Project)
  • Socio-Economic Research Centre (Research Centre)
    • By: Universal Aspirations vs. Geopolitical Divides: Imagining the World as a “Post-Millennial” in the SDG Era

    Panel 4: Youth as the Future: Imagining, Practicing and Constructing Futures in Insecure Times

    APeCS Conference 2025, University of Edinburgh, 2-3 June 2025: Future-Making in Times of Conflict, Violence and Insecurity

    Elena Miltiadis, 真人线上娱乐 University 

    Mette Fog Olwig, 真人线上娱乐 University 

    ‘Youth’ frequently emerges as a temporal category, defined by an individual’s age and expressed as a social time of liminality (Cole & Durham, 2008; Dalsgard, 2014). Youth also tend to be associated to the future (Cole & Durham, 2008), both because ‘youth’ is seen as embodying the future (whether of a nation, or the world at large), as well as because youth engage with futural temporal orientations in their daily lives, increasingly facing conflict, violence, risk, uncertainty, and insecurity (c.f., Bryant & Knight, 2019; Cole & Durham, 2008). 

    真人线上娱乐 welcome contributions that explore the intersections between youth and future-making in uncertain times both in the way youth experience, imagine, and practice the future, as well as in the ways ‘youth’ – as a social category – is framed through its future-oriented temporality. Acknowledging the cultural, geographical, and temporal variations in how ‘youth’ is defined, perceived, and experienced, we do not offer a fixed definition of the term. Moreover, while youth participate in global communities, the practices and possibilities of ‘youth’ vary across local and cultural contexts (Walker, 2020). 

    A focus on youth provides unique perspectives on practices of future-making in contexts of conflict, violence, and insecurity and of social change. These encompass but are not limited to: the relationship between ‘youth’, youths, and politics in the ways youth engage in future-oriented political action as well as in the making of ‘youth’ as a powerful political symbol; future-making in digital spaces; the affective dimension of future-making, especially in contexts of conflict and uncertainty; how youth imagine and practice the future when faced with conflicts, violences, and insecurities; and how youths’ futures and their perception of them is shaped by structural forces, such as colonial legacies, geopolitical inequalities, authoritarian politics, intergenerational power relations and neoliberal economies. 

    Please send your paper proposal ideas (150 words) and inquiries to to Elena Miltiadis (miltiadis@ruc.dk) and Mette Fog Olwig (mettefo@ruc.dk). The deadline for submissions is 10 March 2025.