Call for Papers – Crossings: Visual Studies Across Borders (PhD Conference)

20. 10. 2025

We are pleased to invite you to participate in the upcoming international PhD conference, which will take place at Masaryk University in the Hans Belting Library, Vevěří 26, Brno (Czech Republic) on Wednesday, the 3rd of December 2025.

Borders, as an ever-present issue, can be either physical demarcations drawn on maps and reinforced by walls or conceptual constructs, determining social divisions, marking the boundaries of cultures, edges of disciplines, and limits of identities. Frontiers can regulate movement, define belonging, and serve as a site of negotiation, exclusion, and resistance. Yet they are never fixed: they shift, dissolve, and reappear in new forms.

Topics might include, but are not restricted to:


Geopolitical Frontiers, Territorial Borders and Nationhood

· National Borders and Ethnic Boundaries

· Transnational and Cross-border Movements

· Decolonisation and the Anti-colonial

· Regional and Local Borders

· Demarcation Lines in Conflict Zones


Environmental Borders

· Natural divides – rivers, mountains, and coastlines

· Human and Non-human Spheres

· Anthropocene and Symbiocene

· Digital and Physical

· Artificial Intelligence and Human Creativity


Identity Thresholds

· Religious Borders

· Class and Social Divides

· Gender and Sexuality Boundaries


Edges of Medium

· Frames, Edges, and Adjustment

· Material Limitations, Potential and Scope

· Period Boundaries and Borders of Genre


Limits of Disciplines

· Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Visual Studies

· Borders and Possibilities of Visual Studies


This international conference invites all PhD candidates engaged with visual studies to submit critical reflections that interrogate the ways in which borders in their many forms – spatial, conceptual, social, artistic, intellectual, and psychological are constructed, maintained, and challenged. By bringing together diverse disciplinary approaches, we aim to foster dialogue on how borders are crossed, represented, contested, dismantled and redefined in visual studies throughout all time periods and to also discuss the innovative ways approaching borders in contemporary societies.


Submission Guidelines

We welcome submissions from PhD students engaged with Art History, Visual Studies and related fields. Applicants are invited to submit an abstract in English (max 250 words), along with a short bio (100–150 words). Please send your materials to Jakub Sochor at 413892@mail.muni.cz by the 20th of October 2025. Selected participants will be notified by the 26th of October.

Each contribution at the conference should be in the form of an individual paper prepared for a 20-minute presentation, followed by a discussion. For additional inquiries, please contact Valéria Bláha at valeria.krsiakova@mail.muni.cz.

Thank you, we look forward to reading your submissions!