Exeter-Fudan Global Thought Network Symposium 2026
Wednesday, 17 June 2026 to Friday, 19 June 2026 at 00:00 to 23:59
Thinking Across Contexts: Disciplinary Knowledge and Its Limits
Event details
This symposium examines how knowledge changes across historical, cultural, and political contexts. Bringing together scholars from Exeter and Fudan, it invites work on situated and comparative approaches, decolonial and non‑Western epistemologies, and the limits of universal disciplinary frameworks.
How is knowledge shaped by where it is produced? What happens when disciplinary frameworks travel across historical, cultural, and political contexts?
Across the Humanities and Social Sciences, scholars are increasingly questioning the limits of universalising theories and reasserting the importance of locally grounded, historically situated forms of understanding. From debates about contextualism and transhistoricism to the decolonial turn’s critique of Western-centrism, the production of knowledge is being re-examined in light of global inequality, geopolitical instability, climate crisis, and technological transformation.
The 2026 Exeter-Fudan Global Thought Network Conference invites participants to explore the entanglements between disciplinary frameworks and contextual knowledge. Bringing together colleagues from across our two institutions, the conference seeks contributions that foreground local meanings, situated epistemologies, and transhistorical processes from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
Call for Applications
We are open to applications for paper/panel presentations from across the HASS academic community, with a deadline for submissions of Thursday 2 April 2026. Please submit your proposal and details at this link before the application deadline. Successful applicants will be introduced to a panel comprising Exeter and Fudan academics speaking to aligned themes, and will be put into direct contact when panels are proposed.
We welcome papers addressing themes such as:
- Contextualism, transhistoricism, and situated knowledge within specific disciplines
- Decolonial and non-Western epistemic practices
- Intercultural, comparative, and multi-sited approaches that connect knowledge across contexts
This intentionally broad call aims to foster dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and encourage participation from scholars working in diverse fields across the Humanities and Social Sciences.
We will inform all applicants of the outcome of their applications before the end of April 2026. With any questions, please contact HASS@exeter.ac.uk with Global Thought Network Conference in the subject header.
Organiser
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Location
University of Exeter