Student conference

Each year a collective of Cultural, Social and Political Thought (CSPT) students organizes a graduate conference to be held in late April or May. Topics are in line with a particular theme, movement, problematique or impulse that they feel speaks to their particular moment and circumstance.

The committee is responsible for every aspect of organizing conference to the last detail—from booking rooms and ordering food, sending out the call for papers to screening submissions. They organize the panels and invite a keynote speaker from outside UVic and a UVic faculty speaker for the plenary address.

Get involved by contacting the CSPT director.

2024 conference

Frictions and tensions: ruptured spaces, stories and knowledges

The definitions of the words “tension” and “friction” are fundamentally rooted in opposition. Opposing forces within ourselves, our groups and communities, our nations, our world. Their meanings resonate in the back-and-forth motion of debate, of the positive energy produced in action, and in the fragile boundary of limitation. We encourage participants to test these boundaries and explore the interplay of social, cultural, and political forces present in the here and now.

The 2024 annual graduate student conference was held May 10-11, 2024 in the David Clode Room at the Halpern Centre for Graduate Students.

Keynote speakers were:

• Naava Smolash (she/her), Douglas College
• Kit Dobson (he/him), University of Calgary

Keynote topic: What does it mean to be an embodied academic?