A one-day hybrid interdisciplinary conference at the University of Warwick, themed on solidarity. The conference seeks to ask what it means to stand in solidarity, how is it built & what are the challenges involved, and analyses/perspectives on historical & contemporary solidarity campaigns in support of emancipatory struggles.

Argument

We live in an age where lives and livelihoods are constantly rendered precarious due to various crises in the form of war, political and economic instabilities, gender disparities, racial exploitation and climate change. Our times have therefore seen calls for solidarities oriented toward making a better world possible- a world built around principles of social justice and equality. ‘Is a Better World Possible?’  will be a one-day hybrid and interdisciplinary conference exploring solidarity and its relationship with temporality. This conference aims to excavate the many forms, meanings and approaches attached to the idea of solidarity, spanning historical manifestations such as anticolonial national liberation struggles to more contemporary movements such as ‘Black Lives Matter’ in the US, the feminist ‘Ni Una Menos’ movement across Latin America, and the ongoing Palestine solidarity and BDS movement. While solidarity has been approached in different ways within academia in recent years, the temporality of solidarity remains an underexplored territory. Discussing this, Nowak (2020) argues that solidarity is simultaneously a historical condition, a contemporary action and a future aspiration.

Solidarity is as much about time as it is about space, fostering connections between people in different places and across different historical moments, while it grounds itself in present struggles it constantly anticipates futures. Even when pessimism and hopelessness about the future prevails in the neoliberal age, solidarity continues imagining a better world- “it calls for in order to call forth” (Wilder 2022). Thus, utilising the temporal aspect of solidarity as the conceptual basis, our conference asks: firstly, how does solidarity and the practice of solidarity engage with what is often deemed as impossible futures? Secondly, what is the role of imagination in solidarity theory and practice? Thirdly, what can contemporary social movements learn from the solidarity practices of social movements in the past? And finally, what are the difficulties that practitioners of solidarity face in bringing forth the futures they wish to see?

We anticipate theoretical and praxis-based submissions, which will bring together scholars, activists and artists, across the fields of history, political science, literature, philosophy, gender and cultural studies. Potential contributions can include (but are not limited) to the following:

• Theorisations of solidarity adopting gender, race, class or caste-based approaches 
• Construction and manifestation of solidarity during specific social movements
• Transnational solidarity, especially with a comparative approach
• Solidarity as affect
• The challenges of and past failures in constructing solidarity in a neoliberal world
• Literary and artistic activism, and representations of solidarity
• Forms of solidarity that address the ‘newer’ kinds of systemic challenges such as vulnerability to climate change, and precarity of lives and livelihoods today
• Problematise an oppression-based solidarity and hollow rhetoric, such as ‘All Lives Matter’ or Men’s Rights movements

Submission Guidelines

Please submit an abstract of not more than 300 words along with a short bio-note of 150 words to the organisers, Archana Vinod and Malvika Nair, at solidarityconference25@gmail.com

by June 30, 2025. 

Select contributions will be considered for publication in an edited volume with the Warwick Series in the Humanities (with Routledge). For any inquiries, please contact us at solidarityconference25@gmail.com. This conference is sponsored by the Humanities Research Centre (HRC) at the University of Warwick. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

For more information, please see our website: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/bwp/.

Follo w us on Twitter and Bluesky for continued updates related to the Conference.

Contact Information

Malvika Nair and Archana Vinod: solidarityconference25@gmail.com