[Commlist] CfP Trust, Mistrust and Community

*Short deadline extension: 08 March 2026*

*/Trust, Mistrust and Community/*
Annual Conference of the Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS)
12-13 June 2026 - St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London TW1 4SX
General enquiries: (apsconference /at/ proton.me) <mailto:(apsconference /at/ proton.me)>

Full CfP: 
https://www.psychosocial-studies-association.org/conference-2026/ 
<https://www.psychosocial-studies-association.org/conference-2026/>
Submit here: https://www.conftool.net/aps-2026/ 
<https://www.conftool.net/aps-2026/>

Trust is a fundamental aspect of human life, bound up with care, 
security, dependence, interdependence, and the unknown. Both trust and 
mistrust are necessary, if not foundational, to individual 
relationships, political and social life. They affect the ways in which 
we lean on and critically evaluate the socio-technical systems, analogue 
and digital, that form the infrastructures of contemporary societies. 
Trust also draws on fantasy as a constructive dynamic, enabling 
imaginations that contain aspects of the unknown and the 
incomprehensible. Mistrust on the other hand fuels dystopian imaginaries 
that stimulate conspiracies, cultural contagion and echo-chambers 
leading to social defences against invasion, contamination and overwhelm.
Despite its apparent commonsense nature, trust rarely invites 
reflection. Related concepts such as faith, confidence, mistrust, and 
distrust form a complex family. In post-truth times, where 
misinformation and disinformation proliferate, deciding what or whom to 
trust has become both crucial and increasingly fraught. Trust and 
mistrust operate dialectically: trust is conditional and requires 
scepticism and criticality, while unmitigated mistrust becomes 
corrosive, undermines discernment and elicits paranoia. This can foster 
collapse into narcissistic isolation.
The challenge today is how to understand and calibrate trust and 
mistrust without collapsing into distrust and powerlessness. Truth has 
long been linked to trust, yet many perspectives propose that truth 
itself is unstable and socially constructed. Can we bear this 
instability and the responsibility that it entails?
We welcome contributions that may help us deepen our understanding of 
these aspects of our entangled conscious and unconscious psychic, social 
and political lives.


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