#DNC6 (6th DiscourseNet Congress) – Discourse and the imaginaries of past, present and future societies: media and representations of (inter)national (dis)orders
Website:
https://discourseanalysis.net/DNC6
Contact:
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Location: ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Brussels
Date: July 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th, 2025
Language policy:
DiscourseNet is a multilingual association. At DNC6 we welcome contributions in the following languages: French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
We highly recommend providing a visual aid in English if you decide to present in Spanish or Portuguese. This is likely to facilitate interaction in multilingual panels.
Topic:
Discourse and the imaginaries of present and future societies: media and representations of
(inter)national (dis)orders)
CfP
The 6th DiscourseNet Congress (DNC6) focuses on the discursive construction of social and
political imaginaries. It offers a forum to discuss how social actors imagine and articulate past,
present and future societies in a world marked by multiple and overlapping crises.
DNC6 welcomes contributions of authors who explore ontological, theoretical, and
methodological aspects of imaginaries that may (re)shape our societies. We also welcome
analyses and case studies of specific imaginaries circulating in our mediatized societies. These
may focus on linguistic, textual, narrative, visual, multimodal, and/or ideological articulations
of social and political imaginaries.
This conference is open to discourse scholars from all disciplines, as well as to other scholars
in the humanities and social sciences working on (aspects of) the imaginaries that allow us
to make sense of and shape our realities. DNC6 offers an interdisciplinary forum for
discussing imaginaries and the discursive construction of old and new (inter)national
(dis)orders.
A non-exhaustive list of questions that may be addressed at this event is provided below:
Ø How are past, present, and future societies imagined in debates over culture, education,
migration, economy, climate change, AI and/or robotics?
Ø What are the building blocks of populist, neoliberal, environmentalist, radically
democratic, reactionary and/or post-humanist imaginaries? How do these evolve?
Ø What role do media play in the production, distribution, and consumption of
imaginaries? How do media impact on the articulation of imaginaries?
Ø How do media figure with(in) discursive imaginaries of past, present and future
societies? What socio-technical imaginaries inform existing and future mediascapes?
Ø How can one operationalize discourse analytical approaches, concepts, and methods to
investigate cultural, social, political and/or environmental imaginaries.
Ø How are imaginaries of past, present and future expressed in different media types and
genres?
Ø How can we identify imaginaries in works of fiction, non-fiction, and science fiction?
What are their characteristics and how do they evolve over time?
Ø How do discursively constructed imaginaries inform social identities and subjectivities?
How do they impact on past, present, and future notions of citizenship?
DNC6 invites scholars to submit papers that may enrich our understanding of social and
political imaginaries, through explicit theoretical discussions and/or through relevant case
studies and discourse studies.
Concepts of the ‘imaginary’ have so far occupied a relatively marginal position in the field of
discourse studies. While the notion is not absent in (critical) discourse studies, other meta-
concepts such as narrative, ideology, hegemony tend to be used more frequently.
The concept of the imaginary currently figures more prominently in sociology, political
philosophy, psychoanalysis, and media studies. In these disciplines we find competing and
overlapping notions of the imaginary that merit discourse theoretical and analytical attention.
What place can we give to the concept of the imaginary in the field of discourse studies? What
concepts and methods can discourse scholars offer to investigate social and political
imaginaries? DNC6 invites discourse scholars to present relevant research and/or explicit
reflections on such matters.
The imaginary has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. Imaginaries have been thought of
as background horizons providing tacit and pre-reflective social meanings that prefigure the
way subjects relate to themselves and to the world. They have been treated as images of self
and society that infuse reality with imaginary significations. Authors have also drawn attention
to the interpretive functions of imaginaries.
Imaginaries play a key role in fictional and non-fictional types of discourse. They also play a
role in the construction of social identities and ideologies. Psychoanalysis has stressed the
importance of the imaginary in constituting subjects and subjectivity. The imaginary has been
theorized in relation to ideology, as well as in relation to specific ideologies such as nationalism.
Concepts of the imaginary may help us to understand how social actors construct discourses of
social (dis)order. Empirical studies have focused on topics as varied as the way scientists
imagine the future of climate change, the construction of plans for the future of urban
environments, migration, cyber- and energy security, university education, and so on.
We only started to scratch the surface of the literature on social and political imaginaries here.
DNC6 invites scholars from all subfields of the transdisciplinary field of (critical) discourse
studies to submit papers and to explore what lies under the tip of the iceberg. We also explicitly
welcome scholars from other disciplines and perspectives in the humanities and social sciences:
Ø Media studies
Ø Communication sciences
Ø Political sciences
Ø International relations
Ø History
Ø Ideology studies
Ø Semiotics
Ø Linguistics
Ø Post-foundational social research
Ø Critical fantasy studies
Ø Sociology of knowledge
Ø Cultural studies
Ø Audience and reception studies
Ø Governmentality studies
Ø Strategic narrative studies
Ø Journalism studies
Ø Populism studies
Ø (Social) media studies
Ø Visual culture
Ø Future studies
Ø Gender studies
Ø Development studies
Ø Post- and De colonial studies
Ø Environmental studies
Ø ...
Important dates
- Deadline paper proposals: February 28th 2025
- Letter of acceptance or refusal: March 31st, 2025
- Deadline registration: May 31st 2025 (authors of papers need to be paying DN members)
Registration and payment
After your abstract has been accepted, please follow these three simple steps:
(1) Sign up to the DiscourseNet website (create an account for free)
(2) Pay the annual DN membership fee: 32 euros (30 euros + 2 euros administration fee)
(3) Register for the conference. The registration link will be sent to you along with the letter
of acceptance, on March 31st 2025.
The congress is free of charge, but participants and authors must be fee-
paying member of the DiscourseNet Association.
An exception concerning the DN membership fees is made for non-presenting participants
of the host institutions (ULB, UCLouvain and the University of Valencia).
Without an active membership of the DN association, you will not be allowed to present.
The annual membership fee is 30 € (+2 euros administration fee). Click here for payment
instructions.
The congress is open to non-presenting participants on condition that they follow the same steps
and pay the DN subscription fee.
Guidelines for abstracts
Please send in an abstract of 250 words (excluding title and bibliography) before February 28th
2025 via this link.
Abstracts may be submitted in English French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Confirmed keynote speakers
We now have two confirmed keynote speakers. A third speakers will be announced soon.
Ø Annette Knaut (Augsburg University) is a cultural scientist and sociologist. She is
currently working on her ‘Habilitation’ at Augsburg University, Germany. In this work
Annette develops a new imaginary of public spaces, called Transcultural Public
Spheres, by re-reading and counter-reading common social science concepts of publics
and spaces with postcolonial literature. Annette is engaged in different research
networks of post- and decolonial thinking as well as discourse studies. Her research lies
at the intersection of social science theory, discourse research, gender studies, as well
as cultural and postcolonial studies.
Ø Alister Miskimmon is Professor of International Relations at Queen’s University
Belfast. His research focuses on strategic narratives and International Relations. He
has published two books on these themes with Ben O’Loughlin and Laura Roselle
entitled, Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order (2013)
and Forging the World: Strategic Narratives in International Relations (2017).
Ø (to be confirmed)
Organizing committee:
Jan Zienkowski (ULB / ReSIC) – contact DNC6
Laura Calabrese (ULB / ReSIC)
Cédric Tant (ULB / ReSIC)
Nadège Broustau (ULB / ReSIC)
Tiffany Andry (ULB / ReSIC
Thomas Jacobs (UCLouvain Saint-Louis / Engage)
Prof. Geoffroy Patriarche (UCL-SLB / Engage)
Kelly Vossen (UCLouvain Saint-Louis)
Lydie Denis (UCLouvain Saint-Louis)
Olivier Rasquinet (UCLouvain – Saint-Louis)
Lucile Coenen (ULB / ReSIC)
Vanessa Demeuldre (ULB)
Benno Herzog (Universitat de Valencia)
Scientific committee
Annette Knaut (Augsburg University)
Leandro Paolicchi (Mar del Plata University / CONICET)
Jan Krasni (Technische Univerität Berlin / ZfA)
Thomas Jacobs (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles / Engage)
Dusan Ristic (University of Novi Sad, Serbia)
Laura Calabrese (ULB / ReSIC)
Jan Zienkowski (ULB / ReSIC)
Geoffroy Patriarche (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles / Engage)
Victor Wiart (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles / Engage)
Cédric Tant (ULB / ReSIC)
Benno Herzog (Universitat do Valencia)
Johannes Angermuller (Open University)
Michael Kraenert (University of Southampton)
Jaspal Naveel Singh (Open University)
Susanne Weber (Philipps Universität Marburg)
Aurora Fragonara (Université de Lorraine)
Magda Nowicka Franczak (Unviersity of Lodz)
Amelie Kutter (Europa Universität Viadrina Frankfurt)
Luciana Radut Gaghi (CY Cergy Paris Université)
Tiffany Andry (ULB / ReSIC)
Nadège Broustau ULB / ReSIC)
Organizing institutions
ULB / ReSIC (Centre de Recherche en Information et Communication)
UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles / Engage - Research Center for Publicness in Contemporary
Communication
Universitat do València
DiscourseNet: International Association for Discourse Studies
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