Annual Virtual Conference | April 23 and 24, 2027

Here and There, Then and Now:

Disability Studies at the End of the World

Call for Papers

Note: A text-only version of the information below is available as a Google Doc at this link.

Amidst escalating political repression, imperialist violence, climate crisis, and warfare, how do we practice disability studies at the end of the world? What can disability studies and the disability community teach us during a time of rampant fascism and global collapse? How might we amplify disabled expertise and crip wisdom - centering ways of living with injury and interdependence - as a way of refusing the ableist nihilism that underwrites apocalypse’s finality and its fixation on healing, cure, and redemption? How do we draw on reservoirs of collective crip memory that persist in the face of dispossession, precarity and debilitation, that brim with ideas, dreams, hopes, visions, and critiques that survive even as many of our bodies do not? What might we gain from centering disability as a site of valuable knowledge, embodied wisdom, and radical creativity in our current political moment?

Striking at apocalyptic forecasts that assert “unprecedented times,” Indigenous, Black, postcolonial, and transnational disability studies challenge this temporality of the world’s seeming end, reminding us that, for many, the world has already ended and begun again many times over. How might the experience and concept of disability help us re-frame what the end of the world means? How have our disabled ancestors accessed the end of the world as the beginning of another? How might radical, diverse, and distinct crip knowledges help us attune to possibilities of and for other worlds?

Finally, what is the role of “study” and “studies” in the ending and remaking of worlds? What does a “field” like disability studies need to do in this current political, environmental, and affective moment? What shape can world-making projects take in a “field” such as ours, which coalesces across and through hierarchies of labor, citizenship, health, gender, sexuality, race, mobility, discipline, age, and access? How might we envision community, care, and collaboration in a time of stoked division?

In keeping with the legacy of the Society for Disability Studies’ annual conference as a site for gathering, reckoning, and pause, we invite proposals that take up these questions and other related, novel provocations. We particularly welcome sessions reckoning with the past, present, and future of the “field” that broadly address its “state” through unresolved conflicts, emergent positions, and methodological commitments in disability studies, disability justice organizing and advocacy, and disability art. Proposals that aim to bring new interlocutors into dialogue and foment new coalitional possibilities across academia, advocacy, activism and the arts, are especially encouraged.

Logistical Details

CONFERENCE DATES AND DURATION:

The Society for Disability Studies conference will take place on Friday, April 23rd and Saturday, April 24th, 2027.
Live conference activities will run from 12 pm to 7:30 pm EDT on Friday and 10am to 6 pm EDT on Saturday.

FORMAT:

The 2027 conference will be completely virtual. SDS will provide ASL and CART for all virtual sessions.
Additional asynchronous formats for engagement will take place during and after the duration of the conference.
The 2027 conference will host nine consecutive sessions over the two days in addition to a keynote panel on Friday evening.

We welcome proposals which offer opportunities to learn from multiple contributors at each session.

SPONSORSHIP:

If you or your organization or institution would like to sponsor funds for membership and registration waivers or access support, so that we can include more submissions and possibly have parallel sessions beyond the nine already planned, please please visit this page for more information and donation details, or reach out to us at meeting@disstudies.org.

Session Formats

At the 2027 conference, SDS aims to bring together thinkers within and beyond academia and across career stages, institution types, and disciplines. SDS thus invites submissions with varied presentation modalities and topics that maximize participation from our diverse membership and speak to the multiplicity of lived experiences that inform scholarly work in disability studies within and beyond academia.

Sessions will typically last 90 minutes. Submitted session types may include:

Panel Discussions: A group of three to four people working on a similar topic from multiple perspectives, with time for discussion and/or Q&A. These perspectives might include scholars across academic disciplines, levels of experience, affiliations with the academy, arts, and political spaces, and other potential configurations. We particularly welcome sessions connected to the “state of the field” over time. Each individual may present for between 15-20 minutes, with time for a short bio break and a 25-30 minute Q&A.
Lightning Talks: Session that features multiple presenters giving shorter, targeted talks in a roundtable or fishbowl format, with time for discussion and/or Q&A. Lightning talks might feature multiple publications, artwork presentations, literary or multimedia work, or works in progress. These talks may be anywhere between 2-10 minutes, depending on the number of participants; make sure to leave time for a short bio break, discussion, and Q&A.
Workshops: SDS invites innovative proposals for interactive workshops which engage virtual participants more actively throughout the 90 minute sessions. This might include sessions on innovative pedagogy, teaching demonstrations, activist teach-ins, mentoring or professionalization sessions, or creative endeavors. Workshops should aim to be self-contained - we will not know of registrants and attendees in advance and therefore will not have pre-circulated materials. Please budget time for a short bio break.
Asynchronous Engagement: We are also considering asynchronous formats for engagement, and invite proposals for pre-recorded, pre-written, or ongoing non-video virtual components for the duration of the conference, such as open text-based forums, conversational blogs, edited audio/video sessions with transcripts, multimedia or visual gallery work, etc.
Miscellaneous/Other: Feel free to submit sessions in any other exciting, vibrant, accessible virtual formats that fit within a 90-minute period! If you have questions about submitting a session in a format that is not mentioned above, please feel free to contact us at meeting@disstudies.org with your ideas.

Note on Chairs and Discussants: When submitting your panel, lightning talk, or workshop, you will be asked in the form to list a Chair/Moderator or Discussant for your session, if you have one. Chairs and Moderators typically introduce the panel and participants, keep time, and facilitate discussion and questions from the panel and audience. Discussants may do the functions of a Chair but are also typically more involved “experts” who synthesize ideas across talks, provide commentary on arguments raised, generate questions for discussion, and more directly shape the content of the session. You may find a Chair or Discussant of your own, or you may ask us to match you with a possible Chair or Discussant from the SDS Board or volunteering conference participants.

Opportunities to Find Collaborators

We recognize that not all members of SDS have the experience or capacity to find collaborators across disciplines and institutions. We invite individual scholars, panels, roundtables, and workshop groups to post ideas for single paper presentations or lightning talks to our collaborative forum. Prospective submitters can consult this database to find collaborators, add more diverse perspectives to their panels, lightning talks, or workshops, and build their networks.

The Collaboration Forum is linked here, and you can navigate to it from the main menu of this website.

You may post to the forum at any time until September 13, 2026. Posts take place through a Google Form which collects data into a view-only Google Spreadsheet. After September 13th, posted ideas will remain up, but we will close the forum to additional posts. You may view the forum at any date until the final conference submission deadline of September 20, 2026.

The SDS Board and Conference Committee will not be pulling together relevant panels - this is on submitters to do. We will also not be using the forum to determine accepted sessions.

Submission Instructions

Please submit your proposal using this linked submission form by September 20, 2026 at 11:59pm EDT. Due to our own access needs, we are unable to accept any submissions beyond this date and time.

If the form is not accessible to you, you may email a single PDF with the following components to meeting@disstudies.org by the same deadline of September 13th:

Session Title
Session Abstract (max. 300 words)
Keywords (three max., separated using a semi-colon)
Session Format
- If submitting a panel or roundtable, let us know whether you have a Chair or Discussant lined up or whether you'd like to be matched with one later if accepted.
- If submitting a non-traditional session format, please provide additional details and accessibility information.
Anonymized details on the people involved in your session (you may provide information like position type and level, academic discipline or non-academic field, institution type, research interests, etc.)

Submissions will be reviewed anonymously - while we collect emails in the submission form, we will not be using or sharing those with the review committee. You may designate a single point of contact for your entire group or share the information of all presenters if you would all like to be included in future communications.

Page updated

Report abuse