Center for Biographical Research

The Center for Biographical Research announces the 2026 Biography Prize.

Criteria for Nomination:
The candidate should be a PhD or MA student in any graduate department of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (or have graduated with an MA or PhD in December 2025).
The submission can be work written for a class, a section of a thesis or dissertation, or a completed thesis or dissertation. If written for a class, it should be work completed between May 2025 and April 2026 (and not previously submitted for a Biography Prize).

The project should be 3,000 to 10,000 words in length. Longer projects can be submitted in their entirety, with a particular chapter or section highlighted for consideration. The work should demonstrate knowledge or awareness of central debates and theorizing in the field and study of life writing.

CFP--True Crime (4/30/2026; 7/26/2026) Mid-Atlantic Pop Cult Assoc. VIRTUAL SUMMER SYMPOSIUM

This one-day virtual event on July 26, 2026 is in addition to our 3-day conference in November to accommodate scholars outside the Mid-Atlantic region and those for whom an in-person event is otherwise inaccessible. We greatly encourage international scholars to submit for this dynamic, one-day event!

The True Crime Area invites papers and presentations on all aspects of True Crime, including but not limited to nonfiction stories of crimes across a range of media such as podcasts, film/documentaries, and television. Papers may deal with particular case narratives, psychology of a crime, or investigative journalism as it pertains to True Crime. We recognize the interdisciplinarity of the True Crime genre, and also welcome submissions that explore topics such as gender/demographics of audiences, perpetrators or victims; media literacy of True Crime; sensationalizing high profile cases; criminology, victimology, and forensics; wrongful convictions and advocacy; prevention of crime, family/victim consent, and survivor stories; crimes against POC, indigenous groups, or marginalized peoples; and more. Presentations should be aware of and respectful to victims and their families as applicable to the specific topic being explored. For additional information, see: https://mapaca.net/areas/true-crime

Proposals should take the form of 300-word abstracts, and may only be submitted to one appropriate area. For the Summer Symposium, presentations may be formed into panels across a number of related areas. For a list of areas and area chair contact information, visit mapaca.net/areas. General questions can be directed to [email protected]. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, April 30th, 2026.

For more information, visit mapaca.net.

Dr. Samantha Przybylowicz Axtell [email protected]

Dr. Anna Brecke [email protected]

True Crime | MAPACA The True Crime area invites papers and presentations on all aspects of True Crime, including but not limited to nonfiction stories of crimes across a range of media such as podcasts, film/documentaries, and television. Papers may deal with particular case narratives, psychology of a crime, or invest...

Crafting Auto/Bio/graphy: the Mixed Materialities of Southern and Eastern African Lives
9 – 11 September 2026
EXTENDED DEADLINE: April 28, 2026

A colloquium hosted by the English Department (Stellenbosch University), in collaboration with the Department of Fashion Design (University of Johannesburg) and the Department of Media Language and Communication (Durban University of Technology).

This colloquium focuses on acts of written, sonic, visual or other forms of the auto/biographical (a/b) that engage with the subject of a southern and/or eastern African life, or lives. The keynote will be given by Prof. Grace Musila (Department of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg).

There are two categories for possible presentation at the colloquium:

15-minute conference papers in the familiar format which address questions of a/b, whether written, visual, or otherwise, by and on southern and eastern Africa subjects.

15-minute a/b exhibition or performance; a/b screening; a/b practice demonstration.

We invite abstracts on topics including, but not limited to:

creative lives in a/b; the art of/art as life narration (written, performed, visual, cinematic, digital);

q***ring a/b practice; genders, sexuality and a/b genres;

lives in crisis; marginal/liminal lives; fragmented lives; lives revealed/concealed; lives in transition, transit or cultural translation; living interregnums;

migrant and refugee life stories: risk, resilience, resistance and rights;

disability and illness a/b;

(re)viewing cinematic selves/subjects: auto-pics, biopics, a/b documentary; a/b drama/playscripts/screenplays;

citizenship and identity – private lives, public lives, collectives, communities;

life narration in question; decolonizing life writing and a/b theory; innovative a/b methodologies;

a/b as ethics and aesthetics; a/b as memory, remembering and archives;

hybrid generic forms e.g. autofiction, biofiction, embedded epistolary, diary, journal, auto- or bio-graphics;

memoir: written, photo/visual; mixed media memoir;

eco-a/b, toxic dwelling, damaged environments;Indian and/or Atlantic l

Submission Guidelines & Deadlines:

Abstract submission deadline: 28 April 2026
Notification of acceptance: 18 May 2026

Please use the link below to submit your 250 words abstract, your university affiliation and a short biographical note (80 words):
Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdhJ9WEQhIFHpzYhn5XkPn2WralkeM1zHRQ9aVFXtxZ31vJ9Q/viewform?usp=publish-editor

OR

Submit your 250 words abstract, your university affiliation and a short biographical note (80 words) to (all) colloquium organisers: Mathilda Slabbert, [email protected]; Prof Khaya Mchunu, [email protected]; Dr Rachel Matteau, [email protected]; Prof Louise Green, [email protected]

Once accepted, we will provide information on the particularities of the colloquium. Attendees are responsible for arranging and funding their own travel, accommodation, and local transport.

Conference Fee:
Academics: R500Students: R300

docs.google.com

Join us this week for our next Brown Bag Biography Talk: “Maktub: Anti-colonial refusal and the inheritance of Salah Ben Youssef” presented by Nadia Ben-Youssef, Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

🗓 Thursday, February 26 | ⏰ 12–1:15 PM (HST)
📍 Kuykendall 410, UH Mānoa

Maktub - Arabic for "it is written" - invites surrender and generational accountability. My grandfather Salah Ben Youssef was a revolutionary and freedom fighter in Tunisia’s independence movement, who dedicated his life to the struggle against colonialism in all of its forms and iterations. He belonged to a global movement of solidarity aiming to change the shape of the world, and was assassinated in 1961. For over 15 years, I have been documenting both our family history as well as the vision of the Third World movement, and recommitting to my own responsibility to my grandfather's life and sacrifice. The talk will trace his genealogy and mine, and point to the world we both know is possible.

Nadia Ben-Youssef is a human rights lawyer serving as the Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she works alongside social movements and communities under threat in the U.S. and globally to resist systems and structures of oppression and to imagine the world anew. Central to Ben-Youssef’s lifework is a commitment to the liberation of Palestine, and she is a proud co-founder of the Adalah Justice Project. Nadia serves on the boards of Adalah Justice Project, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, and Multitude Films.

Join us this week for our next Brown Bag Biography Talk: “Me, or ChatGPT? Testing the Limits of GenAI and Auto/biography” presented by Laurie McNeill, Professor of Teaching in the Department of English Language and Literatures and Associate Dean, Students in the Faculty of Arts at UBC.

Generative AI (G*I) tools have charged conversations about authorship, authenticity, and agency (of both human and bot). Who, we might ask, is (really) the author of AI-generated text? Now, however, in response to a prompt, G*I can assemble an auto/biography on our behalf– one that reflects what its model predicts the subject and content should include. To consider what it means to write auto/biographically with GenAI, I will share findings from tests I’ve run with ChatGPT, currently the most widely-used platform. What does it look like when GenAI writes life narrative? What do such texts reveal about what these tools think constitutes a meaningful experience and an authentic subject? In taking up these and other questions, I will reflect on how open GenAI tools may transform not only the production but also the conception of auto/biography, and at what cost.

Dr. Laurie McNeill is a Professor of Teaching in the Department of English Language and Literatures and Associate Dean, Students in the Faculty of Arts at UBC. Her research in auto/biography studies focuses on the production and reception of life narratives and testimony in digital and archival spaces. She is co-author, with Sonja Boon, Julie Rak and Candida Rifkind, of The Routledge Guide to Auto/Biography in Canada; co-editor, with Kate Douglas, of Teaching Lives: Contemporary Pedagogies of Life Narratives, and co-editor, with John David Zuern, of Online Lives 2.0, and Comic Lives . She also leads initiatives and research at UBC and institutions across Canada related to rethinking academic integrity policy, procedure, and pedagogy, including her current collaborative project, We’re Only Human? Artificial Intelligence, Academic Integrity, and Writing in the Faculty of Arts.

Season 4 of Biographers in Conversation

Season 4 of Biographers in Conversation has just landed!

In each episode, Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies chats with biographers about their choices while researching and crafting life stories.

The biographies we examine this season focus on contemporary issues such as Indigenous land rights and sovereignty; decolonisation; racism; sexual identity; revisionist history; searching for the truth; and the subjectivity of archives.

For more information, please feel welcome to contact Gabriella. Her email is [email protected]

CFP Voices of Liberation
Historical, Literary and Linguistic approaches to Testimonies in the Context of the Second World War
21-23 April 2026
Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece
Deadline: The deadline for submission is March 1st.

Participants will be notified by March 10th.The conference is organized within the European project Avalanche (more information below).

Liberation is often narrated as a clear rupture: the end of occupation and the return of freedom. Yet, as Tony Judt reminds us, [...] every continental European state [...] was occupied at least twice: first by its enemies, then by the armies of liberation”. Taking this tension as a point of departure, this conference explores how liberation was experienced, spoken, and later remembered across Europe through testimonies produced during and after the Second World War.
Bringing together a deliberately wide range of disciplinary perspectives - from historiography to film and media studies, literary studies, linguistics, translation studies, anthropology, memory studies, digital humanities, and related fields – the conference treats testimony as a privileged site where event, representation, and language meet.
We would like to approach “liberation” not as a self-evident endpoint but as an act that generates contradictions: it ends one regime of domination while often inaugurating new asymmetries, new forms of constraint, and competing claims to legitimacy. In this perspective, the focus shifts to the voices produced under occupation or captivity and to the ways in which speaking, writing, recording, filming, translating, and circulating a testimony can itself function as an act of liberation - partial, fragile, and sometimes perilous - within conditions that restrict agency.
We welcome proposals on (but are not limited to) the following topics:

Liberation as a contested process: liberation vs. “second occupation”.
Testimony as an act of liberation under constraint (occupation, captivity, censorship, persecution).
Voices under occupation: everyday strategies, clandestine communication.
Testimonies from prisons, camps, forced labour and hiding, fragments, last letters, micro-documents.
Narratives of liberation and its contradictions: reversal, revenge, disillusionment, “incomplete” liberation.
Genres & media of testimony: diaries, oral history, records, reportage, photography, documentary, movies.
Language & form: metaphors of freedom, euphemisms, hesitations, pronouns, agency and coercion.
Multilingualism, translation and mediation: (un)translatables, editorial practices, institutional framing.
Social reordering: purges, reprisals, sexual violence, displacement, return, DP camps and statelessness.
Memory, commemoration: museums, anniversaries, education, conflicts of memory.
Digital and interdisciplinary methods: mapping, annotation, corpus approaches, audiovisual analysis.

The conference will open (April 21st ) with a hands-on Digital Humanities workshop, giving participants the opportunity for practical engagement with digital tools and methodologies.
Funding and Submission Requirements: The organizers are pleased to offer accommodation to all participants. Organizers will try to cover travel expenses, with priority given to PhD candidates and post- doctoral researchers.
Submissions should include: An abstract of the proposed paper/panel (no more than 300 words) and a short biographical note (max. 150 words).

AVALANCHE is a European-funded project under the CERV Programme (https://avalanche.euro- peanremembrance.org/), implemented by a partnership including Mu.Bat – Museum of the Battle of Salerno, Fondazione CDEC, AUTH – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.
AVALANCHE seeks to connect global and local histories, with particular attention to the processes of liberation from Nazi-fascist oppression in the Italian and Greek contexts. The project aims to establish a collaborative platform involving applicant organisations, their partners and extended networks, coordinating joint research and educational activities related to World War II remembrance at European level. One of the project’s main objectives is to focus on women’s testimonies and language analysis related to historical events that have generally remained under-researched, examining their impact on communities and territories.
Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Contact Email
[email protected]
URL
https://avalanche.europeanremembrance.org/call-for-papers-thessaloniki-voices-o…

Archival Matters: Q***r Memory and Futurity in Southern Africa

Panel proposal to be submitted to the Southern African Historical Society Conference, to be held in Harare, Zimbabwe, 24-26 June 2026.

Deadline for Submissions: February 18, 2026

Q***r histories in southern Africa are shaped as much by what is missing as by what is preserved: silences produced by criminalisation, medicalisation, family secrecy, and archival gatekeeping. This panel examines q***r archives as promising and contested institutions – where memory work intersects with transition, displacement, and uneven regimes of value. The panel invite contributions from scholars working across case studies in community collections, state repositories, and digital platforms, to ask: how do we read absence as evidence, build ethical practices of care and consent, and confront the funding politics that determine what survives in the archive? How do we encourage a scholarly and political practice whereby q***r archiving is also future-making?

More specifically we invite papers that grapple with
:
Memory and erasure: how q***r lives are recorded, mis-recorded, or deleted across state archives, mission collections, medical/judicial records, family repositories, and community archives.

Absences and futurity: how we “read”, sit with, and interpret gaps, silences, and refusals; how q***r archiving becomes future-making (new publics, new genres, new claims to belonging).

Ethics of preservation: consent, anonymity, harm reduction, ownership, repatriation, access protocols, and the afterlives of sensitive materials.

Funding politics and infrastructures: how donor priorities, institutional risk management, digitisation agendas, and platform governance shape what gets preserved and what becomes legible.

Method and form: oral history, ephemera, performance/documentation, digital archives, cataloguing/metadata, and experimental archival practices.

If interested, please submit a title and abstract (150-200 words) alongside a bio (50-80 words) to [email protected] by 18 February 2026.

Contact Email
[email protected]

CfP: Archival Matters: Q***r Memory and Futurity in Southern Africa (Panel, Southern African Historical Society Conference, Harare, 24-26 June 2026) [Announcement]

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IABA WORLD CONFERENCE 2026 WILL NOT BE HELD (intended for 7/21-24/2026, Salvador, Brazil)

Dear colleagues,

We regret to inform you that the XIV Global Conference of the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA), scheduled to take place from July 21 to 24, 2026, in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, will not be held as planned.

Despite the strong relevance of the conference theme, “RESIST TO EXIST: Life Writing, Democracy, and Conceivable Futures,” the number of paper and panel submissions received by the close of the call for proposals was unfortunately insufficient to ensure the academic vitality and financial viability of the event.

After careful consideration, the Organizing Committee, in consultation with the local host institution, concluded that proceeding with the conference under these circumstances would not be feasible. We therefore decided to cancel the 2026 edition and to explore the possibility of organizing a future IABA conference in Brazil at a later date.

We sincerely thank all colleagues who submitted proposals or expressed interest in the conference, and we deeply regret any inconvenience or disappointment this decision may cause. We appreciate your understanding and continued engagement with the International Auto/Biography Association.

Further information regarding future events will be shared through IABA’s official communication channels.

With our best regards,

Organizing Committee
XIV Global IABA Conference
International Auto/Biography Association
[email protected]

Sergio Barcellos
[email protected]
[email protected]