Call for Papers
Deadline for abstracts: March 31st, 2026

Journeying Between Thresholds And Metamorphoses
International Conference

May 8th-9th, 2026
Tallinn University, Narva mnt 29, Silva Building, Room S-529 (Tallinn, Estonia)


Journey and journeying shape social practices, forms of knowledge, narrative devices and experiences of the world at large. They can be ordinary yet unsettling processes, thresholds and metamorphoses, movements that open up, dislocate and transform. Crossing different spaces and temporalities introduces discontinuities in ways of perceiving, narrating and thinking. Transformation, however, is not automatic. Journeying may involve waiting, suspension, or blockage, as experienced by migrants or by those living under conditions of forced immobility. Change and the reworking of experience are never linear or immediate. Journeys often produce partial, ambiguous, or reversible transformations, placing identities, interpretive categories and regimes of meaning under tension. Every movement fractures the continuity of everyday life, requiring the renegotiation of languages, positions and perspectives. Alongside desired or socially valued journeys, the conference also addresses mobilities marked by inequality, constraint and asymmetry: migration, forced displacement, exile, waiting and imposed immobility. In these cases, journeying brings thresholds and metamorphoses into sharp relief, while also revealing fractures in experience and narration: interrupted narratives, silences, delegated or impossible stories and suspended temporalities. We invite theoretical and empirical contributions addressing “journeying” from multiple perspectives, in line with the themes outlined above. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between experience and narration: the journey is also conceived as story, reworked memory and situated, relational experience.
Possible subjects include:

1. Openings and Closures, Continuity and Discontinuity
Rupture, transformation and liminal states, including waiting, suspension or blockage
2. Experience and Narration
How narration shapes, organizes and transforms experience, including interrupted narratives, silences and fragmented forms
3. Mobility and Inequality
Desired, valued or forced journeys, including migration, exile, immobility and suspension as integral dimensions of experience
4. Transformations of Identity and Perception
Partial, ambiguous and reversible changes linked to movement and liminal dislocations that require renegotiations of belonging, role and perspective
5. Language, Semiotics and Narration
Translation, misunderstanding, silence and other ways in which language shapes and directs the experience of journeying
6. Anthropology and Fieldwork
Journeying as a mode of knowledge production and as a reflection on the researcher’s positionality and the nomadism of thought
7. Interdisciplinary Approaches
Contributions from literature, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, semiotics, cultural studies, visual and performing arts, including methodological and narrative experimentation

Related topics are also welcome.

Scientific board:
Jacob Bessen, University of Toronto, Canada
Massimo Canevacci, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy
Vincent Crapanzano, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA
Ilenia Del Popolo Marchitto, Tallinn University, Estonia
Nesma Elsakaan, University of Palermo, Italy
Hanna Geara, artist
Giancarlo Germanà, Accademia di Belle Arti, Palermo, Italy
Salvatore Giusto, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Claudio Gnoffo, Guglielmo Marconi University, Rome, Italy
Stefano Montes, University of Palermo, Italy
Arrigo Musti, artist
Lucya Passiatore, Tallinn University, Estonia
Alessandro Perissinotto, University of Turin, Italy
Kristiina Rebane, Tallinn University, Estonia
Luisa Revelli, University of the Aosta Valley, Italy
Roberta Sapino, University of Turin, Italy
Paul Stoller, Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen/Nuremberg and University of Pennsylvania
Michael Taussig, Columbia University, USA
Enrico Valseriati, University of Padua, Italy

Modalities of participation and deadline:
Send abstracts by March 31st, 2026, to the organizers: Stefano Montes (stefano.montes@unipa.it) and Kristiina Rebane (kristiina.rebane@tlu.ee). Abstracts, max 300 words, include title, 3 key-words and a short biography (max 5 lines, not to be counted among the 300 words). The conference will take place, in-person, in Tallinn (Estonia). Admitted languages are English and Italian. Each speech is 20 minutes. Registration to the Conference is free of cost. Grants are not foreseen. Travel, accommodation and food costs are to be covered by participants.