[Commlist] DiscourseNet Congress - Discursive Imaginaries of Change: Heterotopias, Power, Knowledge, and the "Great Transformation"

Conference

Philipps-Universität Marburg
Marburg, Germany

Date: 19/07/2027 - 21/07/2027
Registration deadline: 31/03/2027
Call for papers ending on: 31/10/2026

Discursive Imaginaries of Change – Heterotopias, Power, Knowledge, and the
“Great Transformation”19–21 July 2027 | Philipps-Universität Marburg,
Germany



In 1527, Philipps-Universität Marburg was founded as a space of intellectual
rupture: the first Protestant university in the world, conceived as a
heterotopia at the very moment of a great transformation. Five hundred years
later, DNC 2027 comes to Marburg to ask: how do we discursively imagine,
contest, and inhabit transformation today?

We live in a world of polycrisis: entangled climate emergencies, the riseof
authoritarianism, growing inequalities, and the rapid transformation of the
public sphere through AI and digital media. Yet the language and discursive
practices with which we address these challenges matter. Academic discourse
too often reproduces the very framings it sets out to critique. The DNC 2027
congress invites scholars to step beyond "problem talk" and to ask instead:
what discursive fissures, counter-imaginaries, and heterotopian spaces are
emerging? What futures are already being articulated — and by whom?

Rather than treating "transformation" as a goal to be achieved, we open 
it as
a discursive site: a terrain of meaning-making, power, struggle, language,
and imagination. Drawing on social imaginaries, discourse theory, and
critical epistemologies, we invite researchers from across the 
humanities and
social sciences (linguists, sociologists, media scholars, organizational
discourse scholars, cultural theorists, gender and minority studies
researchers, educational scholars, political scientists, philosophers,
historians, and many others) to engage with the ways transformation is
narrated, contested, and re-imagined.



Thematic Focus

The congress builds on a long tradition of DNC events that have analysed the
discursive construction of social pasts, presents, and futures. This 
time, we
are especially interested in the imaginaries that different actors,
movements, disciplines, and epistemological traditions bring to the question
of change. We do not assume that transformation is a settled concept, nor
that it always points in progressive directions. Right-wing populisms and
authoritarian movements offer their own powerful imaginaries of
transformation. So do the counter-discourses of feminist care ethics,
indigenous knowledge systems, commoning movements, degrowth advocates, and
decolonial scholars. All of these deserve our critical, analytical as wellas
cocreational attention.

We are interested in four broad, overlapping dimensions:

Imaginaries and discourse: How is the meaning of "transformation", "crisis",
or "the future" discursively constructed, stabilised, and contested across
political, media, and everyday registers? What social imaginaries shape
collective understandings of economy, democracy, social life and
ecology?Power, knowledge, and epistemic struggles: Whose knowledge counts,
and whose is marginalised? We especially welcome contributions from 
Southern,
decolonial, feminist, and indigenous perspectives that challenge
Western-modernist frameworks. We encourage analysis of how educational
systems, organisations and communicative practices normalise particular
epistemic orders.Heterotopias and counter-movements: Where do alternative
spaces, practices, and discourses emerge? How are commons, care, solidarity,
and more-than-human entanglements articulated as alternatives to market
logic? How do such spaces relate to — and potentially transform —
hegemonic formations?Methodological reflexivity: How can discourse research
itself reflect on its own positionings, avoid reproducing hegemonic closures
or epistemic romanticism, and develop what some call "caring research"? What
are the implications of engaged, transdisciplinary, or co-creative
methodologies for our scholarly practices?


Topics and Suggested Panels

We invite 15 to 20-minute presentations (followed by 10 minutes of
discussion) on topics related to the congress theme. Contributions that do
not fit neatly into a single theme are warmly encouraged. Suggested panels
include but are in no way restricted to the following perspectives:

Philosophical: Alternative epistemologies, ontological pluralism, and the
politics of knowledge.Political: Populism, democratic backsliding,
postcolonial and feminist imaginaries of democracy.Economic: From
neoliberalism to plural economies; the discursive construction of The Great
Transformation.Linguistic: From Great to Small Narratives, Truth Telling,
Post-Truth Orders.Societal and Spatial — Social fragmentation, commoning,
urban heterotopias, and community-based change.Ecological: Climate 
discourse,
more-than-human entanglements, buen vivir, and degrowth.Educational:
Onto-epistemologies of commoning education, institutional discourse,
discursive perspectives on organizational learning and education, and
pedagogical imaginaries.Methodological; Reflexive, caring, and
transdisciplinary research methodologies.Media and Digital Imaginaries — AI
safety and alignment, digital platforms, and the co-construction of social
and political futures.Gender, Minority, and Postcolonial Studies —
Anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ+ discourses, in-group/out-group constructions,
and decolonial imaginaries.and many more


Presentation Formats

DNC 2027 welcomes submissions in the following formats:

Single papers - Single papers are individual presentations of research,
theoretical work, or other contributions related to the congress theme.
Presentations will usually last 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of
questions and discussion. Papers will be grouped into sessions with
contributions addressing related topics. Each paper is submitted 
individually
and should include a title, an abstract of no more than 250 words, and
references (APA 7). Please plan your presentation in a way to allow some
questions within your presentation time. Presentations + Q&A will not be
permitted to go beyond one-third of the available time during the 
session. We
suggest that you end your presentation with a couple of questions in 
order to
stimulate discussion after the presentation.
	Symposia/panels - A symposium brings together at least three thematically
related papers in a single 90-minute conference session. Symposia containing
more than 3 papers can span multiple sessions. The papers should be 
connected
by a common topic, question, or research problem and should address 
different
aspects or perspectives of the overall theme. All contributing papers are
submitted together as one symposium submission. The submission consists of a
framing of up to 400 words and abstracts of up to 200 words for each of the
three papers, excluding titles and references (APA 7). The symposium is
intended to provide a coherent discussion of a shared topic through several
related contributions. For registration purposes only, we additionally ask
every individual contribution to the symposium to also submit their abstract
separately and individually, with a clear mention of the symposium to which
the abstract belongs. This way, we can ensure we have contact 
information for
all individual contributors. Panel/symposia contributors who do not submit
their abstract separately will not be included in the program.
	Research Workshops with a methodological or / and research practical focus-
Research workshops are intended for methodological exchange and
research-related practical work. They provide an opportunity to work more
interactively on a methodological question, research practice, or related
topic, rather than focusing only on individual presentations. Workshops may
include discussion, practical exercises, or other forms of active
participation and take place in a 90-minute session. Please submit a framing
of 600 words, a methods section 400 words plus references in 300 words.


Keynotes

“Against School and the Modern Episteme: Transforming Education Towards a
Locally Cogoverned Common Good” - Jordi Collet-Sabé

In Europe, prior to modernity, education was largely conceived as a common
good and practiced as a territorial activity, embedded in local forms of
knowledge, relationships, and actors. The local and “informal”
“schools” had not yet been fully colonised by the modern episteme of
normalisation, exclusion, classification, and labelling. With what Polanyi
famously described as The Great Transformation—the transition towards
modernity, capitalism, and colonialism in European societies—the emergence
of mass schooling became a central instrument of social and political
transformation.

 From the eighteenth century, mass modern schooling contributed to the
reshaping of children’s subjectivities and their incorporation into the
emerging social and political order. Children were increasingly constituted
as state citizens, soldiers, and taxpayers; as individualised and 
competitive
subjects; and as subjects differentiated through gendered and racialised
classifications, increasingly legitimised by scientific knowledge. In this
sense, the modern school became a crucial apparatus for producing particular
forms of subjectivity and organising social relations in accordance with the
requirements of modernity.

Together with Professor Stephen Ball, we propose a different episteme 
through
which to rethink and transform education beyond the assumptions and
institutional logics of the mass modern school and the modern episteme that
underpins it. This commoning episteme draws, in part, on elements of what I
have termed “common good societies”—forms of socialorganisation that
have existed for centuries in Europe and that share important 
characteristics
with pre-colonial communities in other parts of the world, such as Latin
America. Such a proposition acquires particular urgency in the context 
of the
modern polycrisis. Neoliberalism, climate disorder, growing inequalities,
exclusion… are producing conditions that threaten not only social and
ecological wellbeing but potentially the life continuance itself. Against
this background, a commoning episteme may offer possibilities for thinking
and practising education otherwise: beyond individualisation and 
competition,
beyond processes of normalisation and exclusion, and towards forms of
collective existence grounded in interdependence and shared responsibility.

This presentation is therefore an invitation to a serious form of 
discomfort:
to worry, consternation, anxiety, and anger. If we are to imagine education
differently there is considerable rethinking—and new thinking—to be
undertaken. Anger, we suggest, can be a productive place from which to 
begin.
As a starting point for developing a commoning episteme, we propose
discarding the school as the taken-for-granted organisational and conceptual
centre of education, and instead reconceiving education as a practice of
freedom and as an ethical-aesthetic endeavour. This entails an orientation
towards common interests and a common fate; towards forms of care for 
others,
for other species, and for the shared environments upon which life depends.
We also propose self-formation and the commons/commoning as forms of
social relation through which an ecological subject might be constituted.
Rather than understanding education primarily as the production of
individualised, competitive, and economically productive subjects, this
perspective asks how education might contribute to the formation of subjects
capable of recognising their interdependence with others and with the
more-than-human world.

Jordi Collet-Sabé is a Full Professor of Sociology of Education at the
University of Vic in Barcelona (Spain). Previously, he served as the
university’s Vice-Rector for Research and Knowledge Transfer from2019 to
2022. He has held visiting academic positions at several leading
institutions, including the UCL Institute of Education (London), the
University of Cambridge and UNESCO. His main research interests include
(re)thinking education beyond mass modern schools (with prof. Stephen Ball);
education policy; inequalities and strategies to combat them; family, school
and community approaches; and socioeducational zones as a new unit of
education policy.



UnConferencing

We will organise a participatory and cocreational unconferencing format at
the second afternoon of the congress. This format offers any kind of
cocreational space to discuss book projects, research proposals, 
conferences,
burning questions, and form connections with the university and regional
partners such as the cooperating gender center and the democracy center of
University of Marburg. Everybody is invited to suggest topics for
unconferencing sessions.

Please submit suggestions for networking and cocreation on Tuesday afternoon
(90 min sessions) into the congress conftool.



Congress Languages

Please choose in Conftool, in which of the four congress languages you would
like to present your work (English, French, Spanish or German).



Submission Guidelines

All Submissions are to be submitted via Conftool at
https://www.conftool.com/dnc2027/ [4]



Important Dates

Abstract submissions open: 15th of June 2026Submission deadline: 31st of
October 2026Notification of acceptance: 15th of December 2026Registration
deadline: 31st March 2027 (early bird fee) & 15 June 2027 (regular fee)


Fees and Registration

Participants are required to hold an active DiscourseNet membership (€60
for 2 years) and pay a congress participation fee: As we intend to apply a
solidarity approach, the congress fee is differentiated:

Early Bird Rate (until 31st of march 2027):

Professors/full time academics with an institutional position: €168Doctoral
students: €83Colleagues from the Global South / Students:€43
Regular Rate: (until 15th of June 2027)

Professors/academics with an institutional position: 253 EuroDoctoral
Students: 153 EuroCollegues from the Global South 83 Euro
Registration and payment details will be sent with the acceptance
notification.

The congress is also
open to non-presenting participants with active DN membership. 
Non-presenting participants from the host institution 
(Philipps-Universität Marburg) are exempt from the DiscourseNet 
membership fee.



Venue

The congress will take place in person at Philipps-Universität Marburg,
Germany. Further details on travel, accommodation, and the full programme
will be published at https://discourseanalysis.net/DNC2027. No online
participation will be offered. The congress is prepared in cooperation with
the gender centre and the democracy centre of Philipps-University of 
Marburg.
Head of the local organizing team is Prof. Dr. Susanne Maria Weber.



Contact

For further information regarding the congress, registration, accommodation,
or programme updates, please contact: DNC 2027 Organizing Committee
(dncongress2027 /at/ gmail.com)


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