The second PIN Network Conference "Intellectuals Across Borders: Writers, Artists, Activists" will take place in Münster/Germany, co-hosted by the University of Münster and the University of Lisbon. The opening event is scheduled for the evening of Sept. 4, 2019. The conference closes on Sept. 6, 2019.

Intellectuals Across Borders explores the dynamic formations of postcolonial intellectual work in the manifold European public spheres. The conference works with the idea that writers, artists, and activists – like migrant academics and political representatives – can embrace the role of postcolonial intellectuals through intervention and public impact. As racism works vigorously across national borders while right-wing groupings across Europe are interconnected and cross-fertilize each other, critical intellectual work is called upon to make borders porous. In fact, it is the postcolonial intellectuals’ transgressive potential in inquiring and intervening – spatially, epistemologically, ideologically – which we consider vital to their relationship with European public spheres. In both theme and approach, the conference takes the following questions as a theoretical vantage point:

• While the postcolonial is constitutive of Europe itself, what marks out forms of public intellectual work as postcolonial?
• Are these distinct forms of postcolonial intellectual labour characterised through biography or location, by their mode of engagement and intervention, and/or by their subject matter?
• How can we stretch and pluralise the concept of the ‘postcolonial public intellectual’ to encompass minoritized positionalities, inflected by race, class, gender, or sexuality?

The conference is organized in the context of the recently launched NWO Internationalization in the humanities project PIN – Postcolonial Intellectuals and their European Publics Network, which has successfully kicked-off with an initial network conference on “Postcolonial Intellectuals and their European Publics” (February 5-6, 2019) in Utrecht earlier this year. The IAB2019 conference is a medium-sized event with open, yet limited slots for participation. It stands in a dialogical relation to the event in Utrecht as well as the follow-up conferences in Leeds 2020, Warwick 2020, and Venice 2021.

You can view and download the Call for Papers here.