Call for abstracts
45th ESHHS Conference
DEADLINE MARCH 1st, 2026
The European Society for the History of the Human Sciences (ESHHS) invites submissions to its 45th conference to be held from June 30th to July 3rd, 2026. The conference will be hosted by Sigmund Freud Private University, Vienna, and will be held in person only.
We invite proposals for oral presentations, posters, symposia or workshops that deal with any aspect of the history of the human, behavioural and social sciences or with related historiographic or methodological issues. This year’s conference particularly encourages submissions related to the theme of archival work and uses (see below). Naturally, all other topics are welcome as well.
Guidelines for submission
Any submission should include the following: name, email and institutional affiliation of all authors. Please indicate clearly on the top of the page the submission type: oral presentation, poster, session or workshop.
• Proposals for individual oral presentations should contain a 500-600 word abstract in English plus a short bibliography. Accepted presentations will be grouped by theme in 90 minutes sessions.
• Proposals for posters should contain a 300-word abstract in English and a short bibliography.
• Proposals for workshops or round tables should contain a 500–600-word rationale of the event, plus a short bibliography, as well as a short abstract for each individual contribution to the event. These formats will be held in 90 minutes sessions.
Presentations can be given in a language other than English, yet, to reach the widest audience possible, consider providing reading or visual materials in English as well. If the presentation(s) will not be in English, please indicate this in your proposal. Please send your proposal as an attachment in MSWord (.doc/.docx) to eshhs2026@gmail.com
Deadline for submissions is March 1st, 2026.
Travel stipends
A limited number of travel stipends will be available for students, or scholars who otherwise might require economic support. Only those presenting a paper (including in an organized session) or poster are eligible. If you wish to apply for a travel stipend, please indicate this clearly in your submission email.
Meeting Theme: What we do in the archives. Institutional organization and research practices in the History of Human Sciences.
Archives are undoubtedly central in any historical research, as they constitute the evidence with which reconstructions and interpretations are made. As such, discussions about the notion of “the archive” and the examination of sources have been constant in the discipline of History. These discussions have been typically renewed by successive historiographical outlooks, the release or finding of new documents or collections, or conceptual debates such as what can be considered as a source or the uses of memory in the public space (i.e. Osborne, 1999; Brockmeier, 2010). Moreover, the issue of the archive has exceeded the realm of the discipline of History into other humanities (i.e. Derrida,1996; Eichhorn, 2013). There is a profuse literature about this (i.e. Foucault, 1972; Caimari, 2017) and it will remain as a constant topic of reflexion inasmuch as historical studies seek for renovation.
Despite this, there are some aspects about this subject that have been less considered overall, especially when the history of the human sciences is being researched within the epistemic and training boundaries of a particular discipline. The focus of this year’s theme is not so much about the “the archive” as a conceptual synthesis of the range of documentation considered for a specific research, nor the proposition of a new “archival turn”, but about the concrete archives, as institutions which gather and classify many types of documents for several purposes, and the actual uses researchers make of them. The aim is to thematize what relation historians have with the institutional archives, how much we know about their organization and in which way we participate of that, which materials we use to train new researchers, how archives change with new technology and how that impacts historical research, or what kind of documents we consider and interpret depending on the available resources of said archives. In sum, how familiar we are with the functioning of existing archival institutions and what interactions we have with their authorities and staff.
With this in mind, the theme of this meeting tries to promote reflection on questions such as: How the organization of archives determine the results of research? How historians mediate between archives and lay people? How do historians get to know where sources are? In which ways archivists and historians can build a productive exchange? Which are the current archival policies towards documentation preservation, access and exchange? How to tackle the pressing issue of digital sources of the XXI Century? Which are the structural and contingent limitations of archives? How archives should be organized and used so as to mitigate or avoid localisms, ethnocentrisms or dogmatisms? Surely, the participants of the event can come up with many other inquiries or approaches to this topic, whether directed towards these specific points, or as an added reflection in their specific research.
References
- Brockmeier, J. (2010) After the Archive: Remapping Memory. Culture & Psychology, 16(1), 5-35
- Caimari, L. (2017). La vida en el archivo. Goces, tedios y desvaríos en el oficio de la historia. Siglo XXI.
- Derrida,J. (1995). Mal d’archive. Galilée.
- Eichhorn, K. (2013). The archival turn in feminism: outrage in order. Temple University Press.
- Foucault, M. (1969). L’Archéologie du savoir. Gallimard.
- Osborne, T. (1999). The ordinariness of the archive. History of the Human Sciences, 12(2), 51-64.
Luciano Nicolás García, on behalf of the Organization Team.
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