Local Alignments, Global Upheaval: Re-Imagining Peace, Legitimacy, Jurisdiction and Authority

Annual conference of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) & Peace and Conflict Studies - Canadian Association (PACS-Can)

October 4-6, 2019 | Canadian Mennonite University: Winnipeg, Canada

Proposal Submission Deadline: May 1, 2019
Draft Schedule Released: Early June, 2019
Early Bird Registration: June 1-July 15, 2019

The theme of this year’s PJSA/PACS-Can conference offers a platform for convergence. Inspired by the history of Winnipeg’s 1919 General Strike, current Indigenous land and water defence, and food and migrant justice activism, we invite peace and justice scholars and students, community-based practitioners, experiential educators, musicians, artists, and social movement organizers to join us in conversations reimagining peace through local alignments amidst global upheavals.

Through papers, plenaries, and performances, sessions will explore these dynamics. Interconnected themes will include peaceful approaches for guiding social change while challenging the legitimacy of violent systems, re-asserting Indigenous jurisdiction, ensuring safety and sanctuary for vulnerable peoples and refugees, and challenging exploitative labour conditions. Winnipeg has a legacy as an epicentre for advocacy, sanctuary, and mass mobilization. The conference program will include traditional sessions in addition to interactive walking tours, community workshops, and place-based activities led by scholars and organizers on the forefront of responding to the sources and consequences of global upheaval, locally on Treaty 1 Territory.

Calling upon the depth and breadth of the inter-disciplinary peace scholarship and conflict resolution practices reflected in the PJSA and PACS-Can membership, this conference aims to further dialogue, mobilize strategy, and catalyze new insights and practices that empower global change through interconnected local actions. Participants are encouraged to frame their contributions to the conference in ways that shed light on the dynamics of social upheavals and revolutionary social histories. These sessions will highlight both historical contexts (e.g. Winnipeg’s General Strike) and a focus on pressing issues of the day (e.g. Indigenous land defence; movement to #AbolishICE). Our hope is that this conference will open up multiple channels for participants to connect with people, place, and politics.

In order to facilitate dialogue amongst conference attendees, and in light of a small hosting campus, this year’s conference will be confined to the first 200 registrants. We strongly encourage those who would like to attend to submit proposals promptly and to register before the end of the ‘Early Bird’ period.

The Conference

On these important local anniversaries -- the 100th anniversary of the General Strike and Winnipeg’s Settler government expropriation of its city drinking water from the Shoal Lake first nation -- the PJSA and PACS-Can welcome attendees to Winnipeg. The organizing committee invites a broad range of proposals examining the links between local action and global change to struggle with current challenges.

The conference has built in multiple opportunities to engage, beginning with interactive pre-conference options (4 October), and extending for two days (5-6 October) with panels, plenaries, workshops, discussion sessions and concluding with our annual Awards Ceremony and silent auction.

Submissions may include various formats:

● Individually submitted papers (to be organized into panels by committee)

● Panels (3-4 individual papers or presenters linked thematically)

● Roundtable discussions (interactive, facilitated discussion led by presenter/s)

● Teaching and/or skill-building workshops

Submissions from teachers, students, activists, youth, and first-time presenters as well as academics are welcome. The PJSA conference provides a welcoming environment designed to facilitate the sharing of work and ideas across disciplines.

You can submit your proposal by following the link: https://goo.gl/forms/B6NXE22Dc0m7AcLf1

We are particularly interested in hearing voices from activists and students and offer discounted registration for these individuals as well as further discounts for faculty-student groups. Please reach out to info@peacejusticestudies.org as early as possible to make arrangements. Details regarding registering (e.g. individual rates, discounted group rates, etc.) are forthcoming. For more information, contact info@peacejusticestudies.org or visit https://www.peacejusticestudies.org.

Proposal submitters will be informed of the committee’s decision by May 30, and the committee will publish a preliminary schedule in June. Please register early due to the small size of this year’s conference venue.

We are especially interested in papers and panels which address:

● The contribution of peace and justice, conflict resolution studies and practise in addressing global upheaval through local initiatives

● New forms of local organization and possibilities for decentralizing power through regionally specific forms of municipalism

● Ways of conceptualizing peacemaking and peacekeeping

● Land-based conflicts and building meaningful solidarity

● Labour, social contestation and intensities, and tactics for resistance

About Winnipeg

The province of Manitoba only joined the young Canadian confederation (1867) after a period of revolutionary struggle led by the great Indigenous Métis leader Louis Riel, who was hung by the state in 1885. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 saw strike leaders seize the levers of municipal governance, bringing the province into a revolutionary period that contemporaries compared with the 1917 October Revolution in Russia.

Today, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, Winnipeg has the largest urban Indigenous population in Canada. It is a hub of a broader Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation through the Idle No More movement, as well as the site of Canada’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Manitoba also has a deep history of receiving displaced people. Waves of refugee and immigrant resettlement began with Eastern European Mennonites fleeing prosecution, followed by Vietnamese and Laotian Boat People and now, Syrian and Yazidi communities.

Please join us in October 2019 for what promises to be an engaging and dynamic exchange.


- The 2019 PJSA/PACS-Can Conference Organizing Committee