Museums (em)Power Call for Papers and Call for Still Images Now Open

The Museum Studies PhD Community at the University of Leicester is happy to announce that the Call for Papers and Call for Still Images are now open for submission! Museums (em)Power, a multidisciplinary conference on art and cultural institutions, seeks to explore the power relations in the contemporary museum context. The term ‘museums’ in the title encompasses not only museums but all forms of cultural institutions where people, objects and other entities interact.

By putting ‘em’ in parenthesis, the term ‘(em)Power’ has two implications. Cultural institutions can own, share, give or withhold authority through the distribution of values and meanings. Whether empowering or not, cultural institutions are unquestionably political spaces where power negotiations between different bodies take place.

This conference therefore aims to encourage conversations between academics, artists and professionals from different sectors about how cultural institutions react to the dynamics of power happening around them.

Museums (em)Power will be the seventh conference developed by the PhD community at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies.

This Call for Papers welcomes submissions of abstracts on the theme of ‘Museums (em)Power’ addressing the following questions:

1. How do cultural institutions act as spaces in which power is negotiated?

2. How are cultural institutions challenged by evolving political and societal ideologies? How are they discovering opportunities within these challenges or perpetuate them?

3. How do cultural institutions engage diverse audiences, including marginalised and vulnerable communities?

4. How has the Digital Revolution transformed the ways in which cultural institutions negotiate power with society?

5. How can museum collections, exhibitions, or art impact people (such as intellectually, socially, or emotionally)? 

Formats and styles of presentations

1. 20-minute paper presentations

2. 30, 45 or 60-minute workshops, panel debates and other alternative formats

3. Visual submissions for Photograph Exhibition (see Call for Still Images for details) 

Formats of abstract submissions

Abstract submissions for presentations and sessions should include the following information:

1. Title of presentation or session

2. Format and style of presentation (e.g. paper presentation, workshop, panel debate, etc.)

3. Abstract describing presentation or session of no more than 250 words

4. Optional: up to two jpeg images, each under 2MB, to complement your proposal

5. Author’s name and place of employment or study

6. Author’s email and postal addresses

7. Author’s biography of no more than 100 words



(em)Powering Images: How would you represent the link between power, museums, objects, people, and society through a still image?

Museum (em)Power is a PhD-led conference seeking to investigate power relations inherent to the museological context. Cultural institutions can own, share, give or withhold authority through the distribution of values and meanings. This explores the position cultural institutions hold in the contemporary society in relation to the evolving ideologies. These organisations are considered political spaces, which negotiate existing political relations. In this regard, they create new ones, challenge the old and empower their visitor giving voice to the marginalised communities. These power relations taking place inside and around museums are one of the key themes of this conference and the focus of the (em)Powering Images exhibition.
This Call invites submissions of original images, to which the authors hold copyrights. The selected images will be displayed in the (em)Powering Images exhibition during the Museum (em)Power conference held at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, on 13 - 14 September 2018. 

Formats of image submissions

1. Colour or Black & White

2. JPEG format

3. No smaller than 300pdi

4. You must be at least 18 years old to submit an image

Image submissions for the exhibition should also include the following information:

1. Title of image

2. Image caption of 100 - 150 words

3. Author’s name and place of employment or study

4. Author’s email and postal addresses

5. Author’s biography of no more than 100 words


All submissions should be emailed to: phd-conference@leicester.ac.uk by midnight GMT on 15 June 2018. Successful participants will be notified by 30 June 2018.

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