Y-Conference: SPACES
May 22–24, 2026, Yerevan, Armenia

The Yerevan Center for International Education (YCIE) is delighted to announce the second annual Y-Conference. YCIE is dedicated to promoting international academic and research cooperation in the social sciences and humanities across Armenia and the wider region. The Y-Conference brings together scholars who work in or focus on the Caucasus and Eurasia to present their latest research and discuss their ongoing projects. Conceived as an inclusive and safe space, the conference fosters dialogue across academic disciplines and national borders — a gathering where new concepts and collaborative projects can emerge and take shape.

The theme of the second Y-Conference is SPACES. We envision an interdisciplinary exploration of this fundamental and conceptually rich category of the social sciences and humanities. Space is never neutral; it is always produced, contested, inhabited, imagined, and politicized. From Henri Lefebvre’s “The Production of Space” to Doreen Massey’s “For Space”, scholars have long emphasized that space is not merely a container in which social life unfolds—it is constitutive of social life itself. In this sense, the Y-Conference’s focus on “SPACES” invites scholars to engage with space as a theoretical object, a lived experience, and a site of power, memory, resistance, and transformation.

In keeping with the conference’s overarching vision, we invite proposals that explore the multiplicity of Eurasian spaces, including but not limited to the following topics:

• Social and physical spaces: juxtapositions, appropriations, (in)congruences
• Urban spaces: mobilities, architectures, commons
• Virtual spaces: digitalisation, imagination, access
• Common grounds and no man’s lands
• Memory sites: identities, pilgrimages, holy lands
• Social topologies: regions, networks, flows
• Empty spaces: exclusions, separations, wastelands
• Research sites: fields, archives, laboratories

The Y-Conference welcomes applications from anthropology, sociology, history, political sciences, philosophy, literary studies, human geography, and related fields.

Key dates

October 20, 2025 – Open call for panel sessions
December 15, 2025 – Deadline for panel session abstracts
December 21, 2025 – Open call for individual papers
February 15, 2026 – Deadline for individual paper abstracts

Format: In-person event only

Working language: English

Travel and accommodation: YCIE will provide lodging for all participants for the duration of the Y-Conference. Additionally, a limited number of travel grants are available based on need.

For any inquiries, please contact: info@yerevancenter.org

Call for panel sessions

The YCIE welcomes scholars from across the social sciences, humanities, and related fields to submit panel session proposals for the second Y-Conference: SPACES.

Panels

• Duration – 90 minutes
• Presenters – 3–4 (max.)

How to submit a panel session proposal

Required information:

• Panel title
• Name(s) of panel convenor(s)
• E-mail(s) of panel convenor(s)
• Affiliation(s) of panel convenor(s)
• Panel description (max. 2000 characters with spaces)

Selected panel sessions will be included in the general Call for Individual Papers, where scholars can propose their abstracts. 

What is expected from the convenors of the selected panels?

• Reviewing submissions for your panel and selecting which papers will be accepted
• Handling communication with the panel participants
• Serving as moderator and discussant at your panel

Deadline for panel session abstracts – December 15, 2025