The Spatial Turn of the 1980’s shifted the attention of scholars in Humanities, Social, and Cultural Studies towards questions of human interaction with landscape and the physical environment. At the same time, the term space was defined as more than just physical places, rather, social spaces and the production of such in the context of human interaction became the leading research focus. This conference seeks to develop the research on spatial perception in ancient societies by gathering scholars of any discipline in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Sciences to discuss spatial concepts from their own disciplinary perspective.

Argument

The Spatial Turn of the 1980’s shifted the attention of scholars in Humanities, Social, and Cultural Studies towards questions of human interaction with landscape and the physical environment. At the same time, the term space was defined as more than just physical places, rather, social spaces and the production of such in the context of human interaction became the leading research focus. The ‘product’ of the ‘production of space’, as it was defined by Henri Lefebvre (1974), is a ‘produced space’, which was defined as the Third (or in-between) Space first in the concept of Homi Bhabha (1994) and later by Edward Soja (1996). Bhabha describes ‘Third Spaces’ as spaces of interaction in which new meanings are created through exchange, while Soja understands ‘thirdspace’ as a connection between real and imagined space that emphasises lived experience. The underlying discourse-analytical approach of Michel Foucault (1984), which implies a kind of ‘thirding’ in a ‘discursive (other) space’ (French: hètèrotopie), must also be mentioned here. 

This conference seeks to develop the research on spatial perception in ancient societies by gathering scholars of any discipline in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Sciences and from any stage in their career to discuss spatial concepts from their own disciplinary perspective.

We welcome case studies as well as theoretical and methodological papers dealing with (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Comparative Approaches to Spatial Theory
• Gendered and other social Spaces
• Imperial Spaces
• Sacred Spaces
• Spatial Lexicon (of any language in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages) 
• Spatial Metaphors
• Theoretical and/or Methodological Considerations concerning Third Spaces
• Urban and Rural Spaces

Submission guidelines

We welcome proposals for 20-minutes papers.

The abstract should not exceed 300 words and should be submitted to thirdspace.uibk@gmail.com

by 30th of July 2025.

The conference language will be English.

The conference will be hosted by the Department of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Innsbruck from 29th to 31st of October 2025.

Please note that the abstracts will be published online. A publication of the papers is planned.

Early-career scholars are especially encouraged to send us their proposals. 

Scientific committee

• Alexander Steiner, Alexander.Steiner@uibk.ac.at
• Sina Kazemirashid, Sina.Kazemirashid@student.uibk.ac.at