Call for Papers

Extended Deadline for Proposals: 21 October 2023

As sea levels rise in our region, the Pacific is also garnering a rising level of political attention. The Pacific is a site and source of political innovations for the complex and intersecting challenges faced by people and governments around the world. The Pacific confronts rising economic inequalities, increased international geopolitical tensions, a mutating pandemic, cataclysmic climate change and ongoing entrenched racisms, sexism, and other discriminations. At the fore in engaging with these, and other matters the Pacific may offer alternative responses, knowledges, and experiences.

The conference will include papers addressing the full range of Political Studies. 

However, we encourage papers, panels, and roundtables that speak broadly to the theme, “The Rising Pacific”.

Participants may wish to explore:

• How centring the Pacific as a region of study, or the Pacific as a collective of unique knowledges and histories, help us to better understand contemporary politics?

• What is “the Pacific”, and do distinctions between Oceania, the Indo-Pacific, Polynesia, and Australasia, limit or enhance our theories and politics?

• What unique challenges confront the Pacific that suspend, obscure, generate, or stymie our existing ways of thinking and theorising about politics?

• What roles do Aotearoa New Zealand, and other Pacific nations, play in international politics in the Pacific and beyond?

• Papers addressing all other aspects of Politics and cognate fields are equally welcome.

The conference organisation team will welcome a diverse range of participatory formats. We encourage submissions of whole panels, author-meets-critic book roundtables, network-specific themed panels (e.g. local government, gender and politics, political theory, etc.) and professional development themed discussions.

Submissions can be emailed to: nzpsa2024@gmail.com 

• Paper submissions should include: the presenter(s)' name, paper title and a short abstract (max 200 words).

• Panel submission should include: the name of the panel, presenters, paper titles and a panel abstract (max 200 words)

For further questions or enquiries, please contact the conference team at: nzpsa2024@gmail.com

Dates and deadlines:

• Submissions open: July 2023

• Submissions close: Extended to 21 October 2023

• Notification of draft panel composition: late-October 2023 

The conference team is reviewing submissions as they are received and aims to respond within seven days.