Call for Papers: Growing Humanities: Flourishing Futures in Challenging Times
Across the UK and internationally, Humanities disciplines are navigating a period of profound challenge. Declining enrolments, funding pressures, restructuring agendas, and persistent political and media narratives that question the value of Humanities study have created an uncertain landscape for students, educators, and researchers alike. Yet this moment is also one of possibility.
The Humanities continue to generate transformative knowledge about culture, history, language, ethics, creativity, and human experience—knowledge that is indispensable for understanding complex global challenges and imagining more just and sustainable futures. This conference invites participants to explore the theme of Growing Humanities.
We deliberately use the concept of growth in expansive and critical ways. While growth is often framed within neoliberal economic logics—metrics, recruitment numbers, income streams, and productivity—this event seeks to foreground alternative understandings. Growth may be intellectual, cultural, social, pedagogical, civic, ecological, or personal. It may involve deepening rather than scaling; collaboration rather than competition; or transformation rather than accumulation. Growth might also mean resistance: protecting spaces for critical inquiry, creativity, reflection, and intervention in contexts where they are under threat.
We aim to create a space that both celebrates the enduring importance of Humanities disciplines and collectively plans for flourishing futures. The conference will bring together academics, professional services colleagues, students, sector leaders, policymakers, and community partners to share ideas, practices, and strategies that support Humanities education and research in Higher Education.
We welcome contributions in multiple formats, including:• Individual research papers• Roundtables or panel discussions• Interactive workshops• Practice-based or creative interventions• Strategic or policy-focused sessions. Submissions may be conceptual, theoretical, empirical, or practice-oriented. We particularly encourage proposals that cross disciplinary boundaries or connect academic work with institutional strategy, policy development, or community engagement.