Inter- and Transcultural Heritage

Conflicts, Overlaps, Coexistence

 

Call for Papers
Cultural Heritage Lab International Conference
3rd edition
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania
November 6-7, 2025
 

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, as part of the FORTHEM Alliance, invites scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit proposals for the upcoming Cultural Heritage Lab International Conference, dedicated to exploring cultural heritage within, across, and beyond the European Union’s borders. This year’s theme investigates the dynamics of intercultural, interethnic, and social interactions—especially in regions where boundaries (geographical, political, linguistic, or symbolic) are fluid and contested.

Global migration, forced polyglossia, and renewed regional tensions that often result in military conflicts and the encroachment of far-right movements on the global polity have become telltale signs of “living in the end times,” as Slavoj Žižek would have it. This has transformed heritage into both a site of conflict and a field of negotiation, whereas the simple dichotomy imposed by structural discrepancies such as core vs. periphery, North vs. South, East vs. West, etc. cannot by any means account for the nuanced changes in how cultural heritage is perceived, curated, and lived. These new tendencies compel us to interrogate whether or not cultural heritage has always possessed an intercultural character and has always resulted from the negotiations of different perspectives and power dynamics.

In this context, our conference aims to create a space for critical reflection on the intersections, frictions, and alliances formed in the in-betweenness of cultural spaces and in the peripheries—areas which are often overlooked yet abound in cultural hybridities and shared legacies.

We welcome contributions from fields including cultural and heritage studies, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history, linguistics, political science, art history, literature, digital humanities, economics, media and religious studies, drama, film, the performing arts, and memory studies. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome and encouraged.

Contributors are invited to submit their abstracts on (but not limited to) the following themes:

  • Inter- and transcultural memory and heritage in borderlands;
  • The politics of cultural preservation and erasure in multicultural societies;
  • Heritage in conflict zones and the afterlife of heritage;
  • Minority narratives and “discarded” national identities;
  • “Minor” languages and cultures and their relationship to cultural hegemony;
  • Syncretism vs. conservatism in EU peripheries;
  • East-West/ North-South divides: migration, displacement, and their link to cultural heritage;
  • “The West and the Rest”: Postcolonial and decolonial approaches to cultural heritage;
  • Combined and uneven heritagisation: urban vs. rural heritage;
  • The (digital) afterlife of cultural heritage: discard, rubbish, digital avatar, etc.;

 

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit an abstract of 250–300 words, along with a short biographical note (max. 100 words), to Ovio Olaru and Daniela Stanciu-Păscărița (ovio.olaru@ulbsibiu.ro; daniela.stanciu@ulbsibiu.ro) by 20.07.2025. For effectiveness, please include “Cultural Heritage Lab conference submission” into the title of your email.

The conference will be held in English and French and will take place exclusively on-site.

We look forward to your contributions!

Kind regards,

The organisers.

The “Inter- and transcultural Heritage: Conflicts, Overlaps, Coexistence” conference is organised within the EU-funded project “Establishing a Laboratory of Cultural Heritage in Central Romania” (ELABCHROM) (https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/elabchrom/ )

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