Utrecht University’s Humanities Graduate School Conference 2025:

The Human Body in Culture, History, and Expression

Conference date: 22 May 2025, Academiegebouw

Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 February 2025

After four years of absence, the Graduate School of Humanities is proud to present the next version of the Humanities Graduate School Conference, which aims to strengthen our research community and encourage young scholars to share their insights with the rest of the Humanities department. The 2025 Humanities Graduate School Conference theme, The Human Body in Culture, History, and Expression, invites RMA students and PhD candidates to explore how the human body serves as a powerful, multifaceted site for understanding identity, cultural shifts, expression, and historical narratives. In a world where bodily functioning and expression intersects with social, political, and environmental forces, this theme seeks to unravel how we perceive, embody, and represent ourselves within complex cultural frameworks. This theme underscores the body as a canvas where personal, communal, and global identities converge. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: 

• Identity, intersectionality, and diversity studies 

• Sign language and body language studies 

• Embodied knowledge, affect, and technologies of the body  

• The body in art and performance 

• Reader-response theory 

• The human economy 

• Embodiment and language 

• Bodily autonomy and the body politic 

• Social reproduction, labor, and the body 

• The hybrid posthuman body and its relation to non-human bodies 

• Colonial and postcolonial bodies 

We invite RMA Students and PhD candidates from all disciplines within the Humanities faculty to submit abstracts that engage with the human body’s role in understanding and construing identity, history, language, and our interconnected world. Researchers from all fields within the humanities are encouraged to consider how their work aligns with the theme, and how it contributes to societal and interdisciplinary understanding. We look forward to your contributions to this year’s conference, where we will explore the vital and evolving role of the humanities in society!